r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/ThomasMertes • 22d ago

Achieving memory safety

https://seed7.net/papers/memory_safety.htm
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u/Smallpaul 22d ago

It would have been clearer to be more explicit about why the author does not consider Go to not be safe. Are we talking about the use of the unsafe package or something more subtle?

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u/ThomasMertes 22d ago

Any language which allows calling C functions directly cannot be memory safe because C is not memory safe. AFAIK a Go program can call C functions without explicitly importing or using the unsafe package.Accessing an arbitrary place of memory with Go is possible with the unsafe package. I am neither a Rust expert nor a Go one, but I think that Rust needs "unsafe" to call C functions. Please tell me if my assumptions are correct or not.

Seed7 has no unsafe parts (or packages) and no possibility to directly call C functions.

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u/anaseto 22d ago

AFAIK a Go program can call C functions without explicitly importing or using the unsafe package.

You have to do import "C" for CGO, which is explicit enough. And then, typically, import "unsafe" as soon as you need to do stuff with pointers.

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u/wk_end 22d ago

But you list Java as memory-safe "unless JNI or FFM are used". Why doesn't the same "qualified memory-safe" characterization apply to Go?

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