this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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Rust doesn't have "safe" and "unsafe" modes in the sense your comment alludes to.
You can just do the little unsafe thing in a function that guarantees its safety, and then the rest of the code is safe.
For example, using C functions from rust is unsafe, but most of the time a simple wrapper can be made safe.
Example C function:
In rust, you can call that function safely by just wrapping it with a function that makes sure that
length
is always the size ofarray
. Such as:Even though
unsafe
is used, it is perfectly safe to do so. And now we can callrust_arraysum
without entering "unsafe mode"You could do similar wrappers if you want to write your embedded code. Where only a fraction of the code is potentially unsafe.
And even in unsafe blocks, you don't disable all of the rust checks.
Thanks for this. I was paraphrasing (badly, it seems). The video actually says it better:
He then explains how embedded code necessarily has global mutability which is "the antithesis" of Rust development.
So yeah, you could make all of those wrappers, but at the end of the day you'll end up with about the same amount of "unsafe" code as you would making the same thing in C++.
Edit: but if what you said still applies, it does seem like Rust would watch your back somewhat better than C++ would in that it wouldn't even compile unsafe operations outside of
unsafe
blocks, unlike C++ to the best of my knowledge where you kind of have to review the code yourself to make sure it only uses the appropriate wrappers.