Comment by rhdjebejdbd
2 days ago
Another comment said that returning a * was to avoid returning null which would crash users of the library who didn't check for null. That seems like a C smell to me
2 days ago
Another comment said that returning a * was to avoid returning null which would crash users of the library who didn't check for null. That seems like a C smell to me
Not really. This is like if the char* were an Option<String> but you had programs which stupidly didn't check if the Option had something and assumed it always did. As others have said, Rust would not prevent this.
`Option<String>` or `Result<String>` forces the check at the callsite. Unlike C, you cannot forget that the function can error. This absolutely helps prevent issues like this.
Now, the decision to return `"*"` instead of letting poorly written code crash on `NULL` is not good either.
I don't think it's that people forget it while writing the code, it's that people want their program to work with as little effort as possible and decide to ignore it "for now". And that definitely can happen with Option and Result as well. There's no protection for not checking return values, and it's probably not even possible to protect against (in entirety)
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