You could take this idea further by adding an "array_ref" type to the C standard where it is a length and elements. In practice this would be broken into separa

You could take this idea further by adding an "array_ref" type to the C standard where it is a length and elements. In practice this would be broken into separate parameters when passed to a function so existing functions could be fixed post-hoc using attributes - similar to printf formatting attributes. Then passing an array_ref to a function that expects a pointer/length would let the compiler automatically translate. Then you could define the rules for how an array_ref decays to a pointer and how to make one out of a pointer and length. In other words the C standard could make bounds-checking of arrays possible with a good interop story if the standards committee believed it was worth doing. Compilers would have a flag to enable or disable the runtime checks based on safety/perf tradeoffs. Libraries would slowly add the relevant annotations. Eventually most code would have the option of having all array accesses bounds checked.