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by safercplusplus
6 days ago
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Well, there is another safe option for flexible pointers if you can compile as C++ [1]. In C++ you can have non-owning "smart" pointers with run-time-checked lifetimes [2][3]. Importantly, there is no run-time overhead to dereference them. (That is for the "never-null" versions, otherwise there's a null check.) Assignment has additional run-time cost, but pointer assignments are generally much less prevalent in performance-sensitive inner loops than dereferences, right? And you can statically verify [4] your raw pointers, so that you only need to use the run-time-checked pointers for the more exotic lifetime relationships. (That said, for the situations where Fil-C acceptably solves your problem, it's probably the more practical, complete and well-supported solution. And since not many seem to be explicitly mentioning it, the recent Fil-C demonstration of memory-safe linux userspace is rather impressive, right? I've heard that IT security is a $100B industry. I'm guessing an inappropriately low proportion of those resources are being invested in Fil-C. :) [1] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus-AutoTransla... [2] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#norad-point... [3] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#tnoradproxy... [4] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/scpptool |
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EDIT: though I'm considering switching to a tag + 64 bit union, because of 54 bit addressing and pointer tagging. It makes it tricky to get my data layout right though, since it makes all of the structures larger.