Re:The Descent to C (2013)
by bluejekyll on Friday September 03, 2021 @12:22PM
(#28406209)
Just wanted to clarify that Rust allows for the same manipulation as C, it just all has to happen in the context of an unsafe code block. I think your comment might be taken to imply that Rust isn’t as capable as C in that regard.
If you want to manipulate memory directly - which is risky though sometimes useful - C is one of the best languages in which to do it. Memory addresses are numbers, and C will let you work with those numbers in whatever way you want: add, subtract, multiply, divide... and if you didn't shudder at the suggestion of dividing a pointer because there are very, very few reasons to do so then C is not the language for you!
If you don't want to manipulate memory directly, you probably shouldn't be using C; stick with a nice garbage-collected, type-safe, object-oriented, cross-platform language. If you do want to manipulate memory directly, but you want more guarantees on what you can do with pointers, try Rust.