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> That is, specifically AFAIK, not what it means in Rust. It's well defined there, so there's no need to resort to "the usual understanding". This causes a lot
by patrick451 6y ago
> That is, specifically AFAIK, not what it means in Rust. It's well defined there, so there's no need to resort to "the usual understanding". This causes a lot of confusion, but it doesn't need to. If someone is talking about the unsafe keyword in Rust, they're talking about Rust's definition of it and what it entails, or they're using incorrect terminology.
I'd say that Rust is using incorrect terminology, since it is at loggerheads with "the usual understanding" (which should be the default, not something "resorted to"). Rust could have chosen a different word than safe/un-safe, but they didn't.
- kbenson 6y agoOkay, but don't forget to also tell that to C++ about their use of string... Languages get to define their own terms. It's not rare for two languages to use terminology in similar, but different in fundamental ways, concepts. An extremely common example would be "threads". In the case of "unsafe", we're not even really staying within the realm of software engineering to find a terminology mismatch in this case, we're going back to the English language itself (in which case almost all the keywords in any language might have a similar problem).