Comment by bonzini
14 days ago
The correct comparison is to rustix, not libc, and rustix is not first-party. And even then the rustix API does not encapsulate the operations into structs the same way std::fs and std::io do.
14 days ago
The correct comparison is to rustix, not libc, and rustix is not first-party. And even then the rustix API does not encapsulate the operations into structs the same way std::fs and std::io do.
The correct comparison to someone asking for first-party access to a C syscall is to the first-party crate that provides direct bindings to C syscalls. If you're willing to go further afield to third-party crates, you might as well skip rustix's "POSIX-ish" APIs (to quote their documentation) and go directly to the openat crate, which provides a Rust-style API.
If I have to use unsafe just to open a file, I might as well use C. While Rustix is a happy middle that is usually enough and more popular than the open at crate, libc is in the same family as the "*-sys" crate and, generally speaking, it is not intended for direct use outside other FFI crates.
I agree it’d be nice if there were a safe stdlib openat API, but
> If I have to use unsafe just to open a file, I might as well use C.
is a ridiculous exaggeration.
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