TECH Signal 347
Practical Memory Safety
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Engineers should understand that a memory safe label may not eliminate all logic-altering bugs, as Fil-C allows intra-allocation overwrites that it deems non-exploitable. The author argues that practical memory safety requires simple, automatically enforced rules without hidden exceptions, similar to how Rust isolates unsafe operations.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Zig is considering a Fil-C-like target that claims to be truly memory safe by using runtime checks to prevent exploitable memory safety errors.
Fil-C's definition permits overwriting memory within an owned allocation, which can alter program logic but is not considered an exploitable error.
The author argues that practical memory safety means having intuitive and easy-to-follow rules unless explicitly marked, like Rust's unsafe boundary or Python's CFFI.
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