[Info-vax] Rust as a HS language, was: Re: Quiet?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/8/2022 1:13 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 4/8/22 13:01, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 4/7/2022 9:01 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> On 4/6/22 12:35, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> And today it would almost certainly not have been an issue. Most
>>>> languages check.
>>>
>>> And yet, C still doesn't even after ANSI got control of it.
>>
>> It would probably be more difficult to implement in C/C++
>> due to their let us call it flexible approach to pointers.
>>
>> It would break a lot of bad code that did not need to
>> exceed bounds but actually did.
>>
>> It would require an unsafe { } construct to allow
>> to exceed bounds where actually needed.
>>
>> Too complicated and breaking too much existing
>> code. I am not surprised that it did not happen.
>>
>> New languages have the benefit of starting without
>> luggage of backwards compatibility requirements.
> 
> As I stated elsewhere, the change to ANSI C from K&R broke
> everything.  You can not compile K&R with an ANSI C Compiler
> and vice versa.  What better time to fix it all?

Not everything.

But it would obviously have been a lot better to do it in
89 than in 99 or 11.

We would probably need to find someone that was actually
in the C WG for C89 to know if the question came up and
if it did why they decided not to change.

Arne