GSL

The problem is that, while in many ways an improvement over traditional coding practice, the subset of C++ associated with the Core Guidelines (GSL stands for "(Core) Guidelines Support Library") has turned out to be a dead-end when it comes to memory safety. In fact it formalizes the depenedency on intrinsically unsafe elements like native pointers, std::shared_ptr, etc. I mean, with "regular" C++ you're not actually obligated to use those intrinsically unsafe elements. With the Core Guidelines you are. SaferCPlusPlus[1] is an alternative subset of C++ that doesn't have that same problem. It achieves memory safety by simply excluding the intrinsically unsafe elements and providing memory-safe alternatives. > All compile time checks. Not quite in reality. One small issue with the GSL, for example, is that its not_null pointer class does a

That's what the GSL was supposed to be https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL It seemed really cool. All compile time checks. I have no idea why it didn't take off

https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL is an attempt at something like this. The Core Guidelines have been in development for a long time now; and they do only catch a subset of issues. I'm all in favor of making languages safer overall though!

not_null style classes might be what you're after, e.g. https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL/blob/master/include/gsl/gsl.... Whan trying to store nullptr in it at runtime that will result in an exception or abort or whatever it's implemented like. Depending on the usecase, it's still better than manually checking for nullptr though. moving from a pointer must give a valid object Yes (well, actually it's state is 'valid but unspecified') but afaik performing any operations having preconditions on moved-from objects is undefined behaviour anyway so you shouldn't even be doing that. And when using not_null that would again result in an exception.

The C++ Core Guidelines Checker, in combination with the Guidelines Support Library, is supposed to bring Rust-like memory safety guarantees to C++. Has anyone here had a chance to try it out? https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppC... https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt762841.aspx https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/10/12/cppcorech... Microsoft has been embracing the idea. But, the GSL and Checker are both compiler-independent.

I thought there was a checker (based on clang) included by the CPP Core Guidelines [0], but I'm not seeing it there currently. Must have been external. I know I saw a tool that provided partial support, at least for GSL [1] (MS's library support of the the CPP Core Guidelines). [0] https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines [1] https://github.com/microsoft/gsl/

I was mainly talking about the C++ Guideline Support Library and GSL profile "checkers" that have been in process for the last couple of years. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2015/12/03/c-core-gu... https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE