this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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It's also a fallacy that rust code is memory safe. I audited a couple of large rust projects and found that they both had tens of unsafe constructs. I presume other projects are similar.
You can't use "unsafe" and then claim that your program's memory safe. It may be "somewhat safe-ish" but claiming that your code is safe because you carefully reviewed your unsafe sections leaves you on the same shaky ground as c++, where they also claim that they carefully review their code.
I don't have the data, but I don't think it's wild to assume that most rust programs have 0-1 unsafe blocks, in total. Except for special cases like ffi.
Even if your rust project has 1000s of unsafe blocks, it is still safer than C++, which is 100% an unsafe block. You only have to carefully review the parts marked "unsafe", in C++ you have to carefully review the whole code.
Also, because unsafe blocks are explicitly declared, you know which parts of the code require extra carefulness, and if you encounter a memory bug, doing Ctrl+F "unsafe" will soon show the root cause.
Yes, that's the difference between "safer" and "actually safe".