[f33d5173]

The syntax is rather confusing. This is not an array of length 1, but rather a pointer which points to a memory segment which is at least 1 integer long. In other words, any array of any length (>=1) would be a valid argument to this function. "static" here means "don't do the normal thing where you totally ignore the length of an array argument to a function (which is, like usual, really just a pointer)". "static" was chosen because the keyword was available rather than because it was a particularly descriptive name.

[saghm]

I see. Can you use `static 0` for a non-null empty array, or does that run into issues around what it means to allocate 0 bytes? I feel like the distinction between "empty but safe to use" and "not safe to use, so you need to check first" is a pretty important part of what most of the solution look like in languages that don't have this problem. Being able to statically know that something is non-empty is nice, but it's not quite the same as being forced to check if it's valid.

[eptcyka]

I can understand that this a somewhat practical solution to the problem of codebase is all C and all I have is a C compiler, so there is merit to using the static keyword here. But it is also unwieldy and used rarely, so I do not think it is comparable to Rust’s borrow rules in any meaningful sense.