X-Git-Url: https://git.ralfj.de/web.git/blobdiff_plain/c0229716d4146908064eb98b91e33acc970fe285..527eabeeebfbd8bbbca29b48bbe8e834c51fbb89:/personal/_posts/2018-08-22-two-kinds-of-invariants.md?ds=inline diff --git a/personal/_posts/2018-08-22-two-kinds-of-invariants.md b/personal/_posts/2018-08-22-two-kinds-of-invariants.md index 2e4ff31..34f33bb 100644 --- a/personal/_posts/2018-08-22-two-kinds-of-invariants.md +++ b/personal/_posts/2018-08-22-two-kinds-of-invariants.md @@ -108,10 +108,11 @@ That is where safe code should be able to rely on safety, so that it can interac This is in strong contrast to validity, which must *always* hold. Layout optimizations and LLVM's attributes are in effect throughout unsafe code, so it is never okay to ever have invalid data. +(With the sole restriction of data which *the compiler statically knows is not initialized*: If you write `let b: bool;`, that data in `b` is kept inaccessible *even to unsafe code*, and it does not have to satisfy any invariant. This works because the compiler knows about `b` not being initialized.) > *Unsafe code must always uphold validity invariants.* -So we clearly cannot just pick the same invariant for both. +So we clearly cannot just pick the same invariant for both, or else it would be impossible to write `Vec`. We *might* want to just ignore user-defined invariants when it comes to validity, but I think that would be ill-advised. First of all, validity is part of the definition of undefined behavior. @@ -184,7 +185,7 @@ My gut feeling is that it should not be (i.e., validity should require that `i32 I have talked about two kinds of invariants that come with every type, the safety invariant and the validity invariant. For unsafe code authors, the slogan summarizing this post is: -> *You must always be valid, but you must only be safe in safe code.* +> *You must always be valid, but you only must be safe in safe code.* I think we have enough experience writing unsafe code at this point that we can reasonably discuss which validity invariants make sense and which do not -- and I think that it is high time that we do so, because many unsafe code authors are wondering about these exact things all the time.