DSDSMan195276·Aug 3, 2023
> Have you written unsafe code in Rust? I have some experience writing unsafe code, and most of the time you can do it without problems
Yes, I've written a decent amount of `unsafe` code. And I would also point out, C programmers say the same thing about their code :P The problem comes when an assumption you thought was ok turns out to be something the compiler writers thought you shouldn't do, and then your code is broken. Rust doesn't have a defined list of invariants you can't break in `unsafe`, which makes it pretty hard to be confident you didn't break one of them. I've loosely followed the work to pin down some of these things[0], but I don't personally feel like tons of progress has happened and they've been working on it for years.
That said don't get me wrong, I like Rust, I just wish the `unsafe` situation was improved. I also a
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gree that creating safe APIs around `unsafe` code is the way to go, but I've seen a whole bunch of people get it wrong due to bad advice given around `unsafe` or lack of clarity around what `unsafe` is actually supposed to mean.
`unsafe` has also IMO been overloaded to mean both "this code does one of the unsafe operations" or "this code has some invariant you must keep". The latter tends to be the better way to go for creating APIs, but is also harder to do and ends up causing you to mark completely safe code with an `unsafe`.
[0]: https://github.com/rust-lang/unsafe-code-guidelines