4 ms·
Take for example working with file names and paths. In for example Linux paths are a collection and bytes and does not need to be valide unicode. Which some pro
by ViewTrick1002 1y ago
Take for example working with file names and paths. In for example Linux paths are a collection and bytes and does not need to be valide unicode. Which some programming languages hides from you and subtly introduces errors. Or even worse, accepting that strings may contain invalid unicode poisoning the entire language with uncertainty.
If you are iterating over the files in a directory the Rust standard library gives you paths. Not strings.
To convert a path that to a regular string type which is valid unicode you need to acknowledge that the path may be invalid. Either unwrapping and panicking or handling the error.
To do this the standard library gives two options:
/// Yields a [`&str`] slice if the `Path` is valid unicode.
///
/// This conversion may entail doing a check for UTF-8 validity.
/// Note that validation is performed because non-UTF-8 strings are
/// perfectly valid for some OS.
pub fn to_str(&self) -> Option<&str>
https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/path/struct.PathBuf.html#method.to_str https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/path/struct.PathBuf.html#metho...
Or accept that the conversion may be lossy:
/// Converts a Path to a Cow<str>.
///
/// Any non-UTF-8 sequences are replaced with U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER.
pub fn to_string_lossy(&self) -> Cow<'_, str>
https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/path/struct.PathBuf.html#method.to_string_lossy https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/path/struct.PathBuf.html#metho...
You get to make a choice, and panicking/erroring is perfectly valid if you only expect valid unicode paths.
As the world and your software changes if you suddenly encounter a non-unicode path then you will immediately know where the error comes from and can fix the issue. Instead of trying to pinpoint the root source of an error far exposing itself far down stream.
- menaerus 1y agoYou said > With a standard library and culture built on exposing the edge cases at compile time. So, how exactly is "you need to acknowledge that the path may be invalid" from your example a compile-time trait? That's certainly not something you know during the compile-time, and if so, then you should be treating all the files like that, so, I see no difference here wrt other languages.
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoTake the function signature: pub fn to_str(&self) -> Option<&str> An option is an enum (tagged union) pub enum Option<T> { None, Some(T), } To get the data out of the Some variant you need to match on it. If you don't cover the the None variant with a choice it will not compile. let my_valid_string = match path.to_str() { Some(path) => path, None => todo!("Cover invalid unicode case"), } You can see this in the playground here were I deliberately did not cover the None path leading to the compiler telling me I need to make a choice. https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&edition=2024&gist=1f335ca9b0ddae1a5093ace149be0c0d https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&editio... We can't know if a generic path is valid at compile time. But we can at compile time ensure that we must acknowledge and make a choice for the invalid case. This now (in)famous blogpost on Go is what happens when you just pretend that everything works: https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-want-off-mr-golangs-wild-ride https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-want-off-mr-golangs-wild-...
- johnisgood 1y agoOCaml, Haskell, Kotlin, and Swift has this, too...
- scns 1y agoThere are at least some unikernels written in OCaml IIRC, don't know about kernells written in Haskell.
- johnisgood 1y agoTrue! https://mirage.io https://mirage.io
- menaerus 1y ago> We can't know if a generic path is valid at compile time. But we can at compile time ensure that we must acknowledge and make a choice for the invalid case. While a pragmatic choice, in reality it isn't very practical IMO. Most of the times you really don't know what to do with the error so you end up turning the condition either into an exception, because it really is an exceptional case, and/or assert on it as an invariant that is broken and which you believe is a programming (usage) error. In any case, you don't really know how to handle it well, and this is I believe often the case for kernel design too - they will try to eliminate as much as possible such cases with testing because they can't afford to panick during the runtime because that would actually be detrimental for QoS. Even in C++ you have something not quite the same but similar with [[nodiscard]] qualifier but in practice I haven't really seen it being used much but when I did it was mostly annoying to deal with. It's like a hot potato that is being thrown across the API boundaries but nobody wants to deal with it.
- JackSlateur 1y agoLong story short: rust is buggy because it cannot handle paths that are not unicode ? :)