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But before I delve into my latest proposal, I want to briefly discuss a key difference between my previous model and this one:
-"Types as Contracts" was a fully "validity"-based model, while "Stacked Borrows" is (to some extend) "access"-based.
+"Types as Contracts" was a fully "validity"-based model, while "Stacked Borrows" is (to some extent) "access"-based.
## 1 Validity-based vs. Access-based
For every location in memory, we keep track of a stack of borrows (`Uniq(_)` or `Raw`), and potentially "top off" this stack by freezing the location.
A frozen location is never written to, and no `Uniq` is pushed.
-Whenever a mutable reference is created, a matching `Uniq` is pushed onto the stack for every location "covered by" the reference -- i.e., the locations that would be accessed when the reference is used (starting at where it points to, and going on for `mem::size_of::<T>` many bytes).
+Whenever a mutable reference is created, a matching `Uniq` is pushed onto the stack for every location "covered by" the reference -- i.e., the locations that would be accessed when the reference is used (starting at where it points to, and going on for `size_of_val` many bytes).
Whenever a shared reference is created, if there is no interior mutability, we freeze the locations if they are not already frozen.
If there is interior mutability, we just push a `Raw`.
Whenever a raw pointer is created from a mutable reference, we push a `Raw`.
If we compared them as raw pointers, they would turn out equal.
And yet, it makes a huge difference if we use `x` or `y`!
-If you read my previous post on [why pointers are complicated](2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes), this should not come as too much of a surprise.
+If you read my previous post on [why pointers are complicated]({% post_url 2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes %}), this should not come as too much of a surprise.
There is more to a pointer, or a reference (I am using these terms mostly interchangeably), than the address in memory that it points to.
For the purpose of this model, we assume that a value of reference type consists of two parts: An address in memory, and a tag used to store the time when the reference was created.
Consider the following code:
{% highlight rust %}
-fn demo5(x: &mut i32, y: usize) -> i32 {
+fn demo5(x: &mut i32, y: usize) {
*x = 42;
foo(y);
}
self.frz_since.map_or(false, |loc_t| loc_t <= acc_t),
Mut(acc_m) =>
// Raw pointers are fine with frozen locations. This is important because &Cell is raw!
- (acc_m.is_raw() && self.frozen_since.is_some()) ||
- self.borrows.last().map_or(false, |loc_itm| loc_itm == Mut(acc_m)),
+ if self.frozen_since.is_some() {
+ acc_m.is_raw()
+ } else {
+ self.borrows.last().map_or(false, |loc_itm| loc_itm == Mut(acc_m))
+ }
}
}