Technology
An intro to unsafe Rust and Rust’s idea of safety. Show Notes Errata A quick correction: on the show I said that a trait needed to be unsafe when it had an unsafe fn method. This isn’t correct: safe traits can have unsafe methods, and unsafe traits can exist without any methods at all (as implied by my reference to Send and Sync). You can see this in practice in the following example, which compiles just fine! trait ASafeTrait { unsafe fn unsafe_method() {} } unsafe AnUnsafeTrait {} The idea of an unsafe trait is that it has some conditions which you must uphold to safely implement it – again, just as with Send and Sync. In the case of most traits, this will be because some trait method has invariants it needs to hold else it would cause undefined behavior. For another example of this, see the (unstable as of the time of recording) trait std::iter::TrustedLen. Thanks to Rust language team member @centril for noting this to me after listening when I was recording the show live! Links The Rust Programming Language, Chapter 19: Unsafe The Nomicon “Rust and OpenGL from Scratch”, by Nerijus Arlauskas Examples Borrow-checked code in unsafe let mut f = String::from("foo"); unsafe { let borrowed = &mut f; let borrow_again = &f; println!("{}", borrowed); // This would be unsafe and throw an error: // println!("{}", borrow_again); } (See it in a playground) Safely mutating a raw pointer let f = Box::new(12); let mut g = Box::into_raw(f); g = &mut (g + 10); (See it in a playground) Sponsors Thanks to Parity for sponsoring the show again. Go check out their Rust jobs! Patreon Sponsors Adam Green Aleksey Pirogov Alexander Payne Alexander Kryvomaz Andrew Thompson Anthony Deschamps Anthony Scotti Behnam Esfahbod Benjamin Wasty Brandon ‘Spanky’ Mills Brian Casiello Brian Manning Brian McCallister Bryan Stitt Bryce Johnston Caryn Finkelman Cass Costello Chap Lovejoy Charlie Egan Chip Chris Palmer Daniel Dan Abrams Daniel Bross Daniel Collin Daniel Mason David Hewson Derek Morr Doug Reeves Eugene Bulkin Fábio Botelho Gaveen Prabhasara Graham Wihlidal Henri Sivonen Ian Jones “Jake”“ferris”" Taylor" Jako Danar James Cooper James Hagans II Jerome Froelich John Rudnick Jon Jonathan Knapp Jonathan Turner Joseph Hain Joseph Marhee Justin Ossevoort Kai Yao Keith Gray Kilian Rault Lee Jenkins Luca Schmid Luiz Irber Lukas Eller Martin Heuschober Masashi Fujita Matt Rudder Matthew Brenner Matthias Ruszala Max Jacobson Max R.R. Collada Messense Lv Micael Bergeron Michael Mc Donnell Michael Sanders Nathan Sculli Nick Coish Nick Gideo Nick Stevens Nicolas Pochet Olaf Leidinger Oliver Uvman Oluseyi Sonaiya Ovidiu Curcan Pascal Patrick O’Doherty Paul Naranja Paul Osborne Peter Scholtens Peter Tillemans Ralph Giles Ramon Buckland Randy MacLeod Raph Levien Richard Dallaway Rob Tsuk Robert Chrzanowski Ryan Blecher Ryan Osial Scott Moeller Sebastián Ramírez Magrí Simon Dickson Simon G Steffen Loen Sunde Steve Jenson Steven Knight Steven Murawski Stuart Hinson Tim Brooks Tim Süberkrüb Tom Prince Toolmaker’s Guild Ty Overby Tyler Harper Victor Kruger Will Greenberg William Roe Zak van der Merwe Zachary Snyder Zaki (Thanks to the couple people donating who opted out of the reward tier, as well. You know who you are!) Become a sponsor Patreon Venmo Dwolla Cash.me Flattr PayPal.me Contact New Rustacean: + Twitter: @newrustacean + Email: hello@newrustacean.com Chris Krycho + GitHub: chriskrycho + Twitter: @chriskrycho