I don’t think that casting a range of bits as some other arbitrary type “is a bug nobody sees coming”.
C++ compilers also warn you that this is likely an issue and will fail to compile if configured to do so. But it will let you do it if you really want to.
That’s why I love C++
Wat? That’s absolutely not true; even today lifetime-tracking in C++ tools is still basically a research topic.
It’s not clear what you’re talking about here. In general, there are two ways that a language promising soundness can be unsound: a bug in the compiler, or a problem in the language definition itself permitting unsound code. (
unsafe
changes the prerequisites for unsoundness, placing more burden on the user to ensure that certain invariants are upheld; if the code upholds these invariants, but there’s still unsoundness, then that falls into the “bug in Rust” category, but unsoundness of incorrectunsafe
code is not a bug in Rust.)Rust has had both types of bugs. Compiler bugs can be (and are) fixed without breaking (correct) user code. Bugs in the language definition are, fortunately, fixable at edition boundaries (or in rare cases by making a small breaking change, as when the behavior of
extern "C"
changed).Have you heard about cve-rs?
https://github.com/Speykious/cve-rs
Blazingly fast memory failures with no unsafe blocks in pure Rust.
Edit: also I wish whoever designed the syntax for rust to burn in hell for eternity
Edit 2: Before the Cult of Rust™ sends their assassins to take out my family, I am not hating on Rust (except the syntax) and I’m not a C absolutist, I am just telling you to be aware of the limitations of your tools
So now we’re considering bugs in the compiler as bugs in the language?
A) Rust doesn’t have a formal specification other than “whatever the fuck our team hallucinated in this compiler version”
B) Doesn’t matter the definition if it fucks your day because you’re not careful.
Sure sure Heil Rust but be mindful of the fuck you’re doing before you get bit ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯
That’s simply not true. The Reference, while not an ISO-style formal spec, does actually specify most of the intended language behavior, and incrementally approaches completion over time. But even if you insist on an ISO-style formal spec, there’s Ferrocene: https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/the-ferrocene-language-specification-is-here/
The
cve-rs
vulnerability is actually not really something you’d ever write by accident. Also note that the bug report has multiple versions because, even though a “full” solution is pending some deeper compiler changes, the first two versions of the exploit are now caught by the compiler. So, like I said, the compiler bugs do get fixed over time.Yeah, and that falls under the first category, bugs in the compiler: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/25860
(All exploits in that repo are possible due to that bug.)
Yeah and those are the ones currently identified (btw that issue isn’t completely fixed) because rust never was nor advertised itself as sound. Meaning, you gotta be careful when writing Rust code too. Not as much as C++, but it’s not a magical shield against memory problems like people have been shilling it as.