Its totally possible, but its considered a compiler bug if it does happen. In the same way that its possible to segfault java if there's a bug in the jit. There

Its totally possible, but its considered a compiler bug if it does happen. In the same way that its possible to segfault java if there's a bug in the jit. There's an on going project to verify the semantics of the Rust language and its safe abstractions[0] which should make it easier to choose which optimizations are legal. 0: http://plv.mpi-sws.org/rustbelt/ http://plv.mpi-sws.org/rustbelt/