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Comment by steveklabnik

6 hours ago

Memory safety is:

1. Foundational for other forms of safety

2. Has an objective definition, when some other forms of safety are either subjective or inter-subjective.

That said, I don't understand why your parent brought this up to you, you are talking about memory safety in your original comment here, so that's what Rust's safety is about.

6 comments

steveklabnik

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inigyou  4 hours ago

I feel that the buzz phrase "memory safety" has been defined by Rust to mean "the safety Rust gives you". Obviously memory usage can be more safe or less safe, and Rust is decidedly on the safe end of the spectrum, but it also has the gaping type system holes demonstrated in cve-rs which completely shatter any claim that safe code is safe, and there are other bugs which occur in Rust while the programmer is distracted by trying to prove their code is memory-safe.

  • steveklabnik  4 hours ago

    > the buzz phrase "memory safety" has been defined by Rust to mean "the safety Rust gives you".

    It's more that Rust's safety guarantee is memory safety. No more, no less. It's not about buzz, this term was used long before Rust existed.

    > it also has the gaping type system holes demonstrated in cve-rs

    This is not a "gaping hole". It is a compiler bug, which has never been found in the wild.

    > there are other bugs which occur in Rust

    This is true! Every language can have bugs in it, and Rust does not claim to solve all bugs.