10 ms·

Does Rust have a formal specification?

• pcwalton 10y ago
  It has a language definition. Neither Rust not Go have a formal semantics.
  • themihai 10y ago
    What's the equivalent of this[0] in Rust? [0] https://golang.org/ref/spec https://golang.org/ref/spec
    • steveklabnik 10y ago
      https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference.html , which is accurate, but not always 100% up to date with the latest RFCs. There's also work on a formal, proven specification of the memory model, but that's not done. It'll be a while.
      • themihai 10y ago
        Unlike the Go spec that's prose only. Why is it not accurate? Does the language change that often?
        • steveklabnik 10y ago
          If you're talking about grammar, that's in a different document. > Why is it not accurate? I said it _was_ accurate. It's just not neccesarily complete. It's not complete because I'm only one human, and I have more important work to do.
          • themihai 10y ago
            That's understandable. I've just tried to prove the point that Rust is still a language in flux compared with Go, hopefully making the Rust team aware why some developers hesitate to use Rust on new projects.
            • steveklabnik 10y ago
              I disagree, but I doubt that we're going to agree, so this is where I will step out.
            • pcwalton 10y ago
              > I've just tried to prove the point that Rust is still a language in flux compared with Go, hopefully making the Rust team aware why some developers hesitate to use Rust on new projects. That's not what I've seen from your comments. Instead I've seen some confused arguments about what "prose only" means (anyone in the PL field would consider both Rust and Go's documentation "prose"), combined with incorrect statements about both Rust and Go and a completely baseless assertion that Rust is "a language in flux".
    • deleted 10y ago
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