3 ms·

I find it funny AF that Fil-C is safer than languages with the unsafe keyword. Who knew C could be so safe with a proper compiler

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
uecker 11mo ago
The memory model of C is intentionally designed to allow safe implementations (still from the time of hardware-segmented methods).
- CoastalCoder 11mo ago
  Could you expand on that?
  - aw1621107 11mo ago
    I believe the claim is that there's nothing in the C standard that requires implementations to be unsafe. If they wanted to, they could bounds check pointers, check allocations are still alive when pointers are dereferenced, etc. and still be conformant to the standard.
    - uecker 11mo ago
      Even more, certain rules are specifically designed to make such checks possible while being conformant to the standard.
    - pornel 11mo ago
      Nothing in the C standard requires bytes to have 8 bits either. There's a massive gap between what C allows, and what real C codebases can tolerate. In practice, you don't have room to store lengths along pointers without disturbing sizeof and pointer<>integer casts. Fil-C and ASAN need to smuggle that information out of band.
timeon 11mo ago
> proper compiler Not just compiler but GC as sell. So it does note solve same problem as Rust.
- levodelellis 11mo ago
  Would you rather have a gc or unsafe? In just about every language I seen people use .clone rather than deal with problems so I suspect a lot of cases a GC can be just fine or faster. Although I'm comfortable with memory management and rather use C or C++ if I'm writing fast code
  - timeon 11mo ago
    > Would you rather have a gc or unsafe? Like in case where you can't use Rust? (ie.: existing codebase). Sure that is what Fil-C is good for. Point is that Fil-C does not solve the problem Rust does. It is more like band-aid. (Maybe my comment was misunderstood because of typo: sell/well) Also I think there is huge difference between GC and fact that some people use .clone() somewhere.
    - levodelellis 11mo ago
      [flagged]
Ar-Curunir 11mo ago
It is well known that GC allows you to solve memory safety problems
Mond_ 11mo ago
? Putting a program into a safe container or isolation boundary (this is roughly what GC is in this context) causes it to be memory safe. This is not an interesting observation. It also causes it to be significantly slower, to the point of not being competitive anymore.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

uecker 11mo ago

The memory model of C is intentionally designed to allow safe implementations (still from the time of hardware-segmented methods).

CoastalCoder 11mo ago
Could you expand on that?
- aw1621107 11mo ago
  I believe the claim is that there's nothing in the C standard that requires implementations to be unsafe. If they wanted to, they could bounds check pointers, check allocations are still alive when pointers are dereferenced, etc. and still be conformant to the standard.
  - uecker 11mo ago
    Even more, certain rules are specifically designed to make such checks possible while being conformant to the standard.
  - pornel 11mo ago
    Nothing in the C standard requires bytes to have 8 bits either. There's a massive gap between what C allows, and what real C codebases can tolerate. In practice, you don't have room to store lengths along pointers without disturbing sizeof and pointer<>integer casts. Fil-C and ASAN need to smuggle that information out of band.

timeon 11mo ago

> proper compiler Not just compiler but GC as sell. So it does note solve same problem as Rust.

levodelellis 11mo ago
Would you rather have a gc or unsafe? In just about every language I seen people use .clone rather than deal with problems so I suspect a lot of cases a GC can be just fine or faster. Although I'm comfortable with memory management and rather use C or C++ if I'm writing fast code
- timeon 11mo ago
  > Would you rather have a gc or unsafe? Like in case where you can't use Rust? (ie.: existing codebase). Sure that is what Fil-C is good for. Point is that Fil-C does not solve the problem Rust does. It is more like band-aid. (Maybe my comment was misunderstood because of typo: sell/well) Also I think there is huge difference between GC and fact that some people use .clone() somewhere.
  - levodelellis 11mo ago
    [flagged]

Ar-Curunir 11mo ago

It is well known that GC allows you to solve memory safety problems

Mond_ 11mo ago

? Putting a program into a safe container or isolation boundary (this is roughly what GC is in this context) causes it to be memory safe. This is not an interesting observation. It also causes it to be significantly slower, to the point of not being competitive anymore.