[sophacles]

How would it be possible to make it safe? The compiler can't verify that N random bytes input from an arbitrary source are going to be valid for the types in the struct - you have to tell tell the compiler "trust this even if you can't verify it from the source code" - hence the unsafe keyword.

[Alexendoo]

Enter safe transmute - https://github.com/rust-lang/project-safe-transmute/blob/mas...

[sophacles]

Oh cool! Thanks for the pointer.

[coldnose]

For integer primitives, all possible values are valid. Just allowing binary initialization for structs that consist of integer types would allow compatibility with C structure. As it is, I have to either resort to unsafe code or manually deserialize every struct

[sophacles]

Oh I see, that makes sense. Also there's a sibling reply to yours for a cool looking proposal to do just that if you haven't seen it yet.