You can do exactly the same thing in Rust, just not in the same statement as importing the functions (which are just that, importing the functions). I regard th

You can do exactly the same thing in Rust, just not in the same statement as importing the functions (which are just that, importing the functions). I regard this as one of the most powerful parts of Rust: wrapping unsafe code/APIs into safe interfaces without cost. Also, I think saying that the ATS has no unsafe{} sections is misleading: it isn't explicitly marked in the source, but the compiler still cannot check the "ownership" annotations in the imports are correct, or that, say, the preconditions of the functions (which may lead to undefined behaviour when violated) are satisfied. In other words, all of that code is implicitly surrounded in an `unsafe` block. A Rust API designed for people to use will also not have unsafe code, e.g. https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/24/Rust-Once-Run-Everywhere.html#safe-abstractions https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/24/Rust-Once-Run-Everywhe... (The linearity is essentially handled by destructors: the common case is the clean-up is just that, clean-up, and so destructors work well. It is definitely more annoying to 100%-type-check APIs that have more interesting clean-up/closing procedures but these are rarer.)