[ralfj]

Yeah I understand that that's how you like to use the term, you've been very clear about that. What I am curious about is whether that's just you. Because the source you gave last time, https://www.memorysafety.org/docs/memory-safety/, doesn't agree with what you are saying, and neither does Wikipedia.

I am honestly curious here. I am a PLT researcher so I am in a bubble where people use the term consistently with how I use it. You are the first person I meet (for some notion of "meet" ;) that uses the term differently. But without external sources it's hard to judge how wide-spread your definition (that you still haven't spelled out...) is.

[tptacek]

Again: my usage of the term is widespread enough that the ISRG uses it to refer to Go as well, as does, well, basically everybody else in the industry. I think you've just message-boarded yourself into believing this is a live debate. There is no sequence of words you're going to come up with to convince me that everybody is wrong when they say "Go is a memory safe language".

[ralfj]

You keep making arguments by assertion without giving sources, so :shrug: yeah this isn't going to go anywhere.

I think we actually agree on all of the factual points here, we just don't agree on how languages should be categorized/labeled according to their guarantees in both a theoretical and a practical sense, and that's largely a subjective matter anyway. So, happy to agree to disagree here.

[Thaxll]

Go is memory safe, what do you think of: https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Pre...

U.S. and International Partners Issue Recommendations to Secure Software Products Through Memory Safety

They recommand Go among other language in their paper.

https://media.defense.gov/2023/Dec/06/2003352724/-1/-1/0/THE...

[ralfj]

Yeah, Go is often listed with memory-safe languages, I know that. And yet when people define memory safety, Go usually fails to satisfy that definition. That's why I was asking for a definition of memory safety that would include Go.

[kiitos]

I suppose Go's notion of memory safety is satisfied by forbidding pointer arithmetic, and, maybe somewhat transitively, preventing arbitrary out-of-bounds access to memory. It definitely satisfies this notion of memory safety. Maybe this notion of memory safety is not considered to be correct, or relevant, or whatever, by whomever. That's fine.