Prospective vision: Optional Strict Memory Safety for Swift #2581
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| In addition, an `@unsafe` attribute would be added to the language and would be used to mark any declaration that is unsafe to use. In the standard library, the following functions and types would be marked `@unsafe` : | ||
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| * `Unsafe(Mutable)(Raw)(Buffer)Pointer` | ||
| * `(Closed)Range.init(uncheckedBounds:)` |
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Does this lead to memory unsafety?
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Yes, because bounds checking for various collection operations taking an range as input assume that the invariants hold for the range.
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| Since its inception, Swift has provided memory safety for the first four dimensions. Lifetime safety is provided for reference types by automatic reference counting and for value types via [memory exclusivity](https://www.swift.org/blog/swift-5-exclusivity/); bounds safety is provided by bounds-checking on `Array` and other collections; type safety is provided by safe features for casting (`as?` , `is` ) and `enum` s; and initialization safety is provided by “definite initialization”, which doesn’t allow a variable to be accessed until it has been defined. Swift 6’s strict concurrency checking extends Swift’s memory safety guarantees to the last dimension. | ||
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| Providing memory safety does not imply the absence of run-time failures. Good language design often means defining away runtime failures in the type system. However, memory safely requires only that an error in the program cannot be escalated into a violation of one of the safety properties. For example, having reference types by non-nullable by default defines away most problems with NULL pointers. With explicit optional types, the force-unwrap operator (postfix `!` ) meets the definition of memory safety by trapping at runtime if the unwrapped optional is `nil` . The standard library also provides the [`unsafelyUnwrapped` property](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swift/optional/unsafelyunwrapped) that does not check for `nil` in release builds: this does not meet the definition of memory safety because it admits violations of initialization and lifetime safety that could be exploited. |
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having reference types bybe non-nullable
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| The rules described above make it possible to detect and report the use of unsafe constructs in Swift. | ||
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| An `@unsafe` function should be allowed to use other unsafe constructs without emitting any diagnostics. However, there are also library functions that encapsulate unsafe behavior in a safe API, such as the standard library’s `Array` and [`Span`](https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/proposals/0447-span-access-shared-contiguous-storage.md)that are necessarily built from unsafe primitives. Such functions need some way to acknowledge the unsafe behavior while still being considered safe from the outside, such as an `unsafe { ... }` code block or a `@safe(unchecked)` attribute. |
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Missing space between span link and "that"
Joannis
reviewed
Oct 6, 2024
| * **Lifetime safety** : all accesses to a value are guaranteed to occur during its lifetime. Violations of this property, such as accessing a value after its lifetime has ended, are often called use-after-free errors. | ||
| * **Bounds safety**: all accesses to memory are within the intended bounds of the memory allocation, such as accessing elements in an array. Violations of this property are called out-of-bounds accesses. | ||
| * **Type safety** : all accesses to a value use the type to which it was initialized, or a type that is compatible with that type. For example, one cannot access a `String` value as if it were an `Array`. Violations of this property are called type confusions. | ||
| * **Initialization safety** : all values are initialized property to being used, so they cannot contain unexpected data. Violations of this property often lead to information disclosures (where data that should be invisible becomes available) or even other memory-safety issues like use-after-frees or type confusions. |
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"Initialized property" is this meant to be "properly"?
Joannis
reviewed
Oct 6, 2024
| ```swift | ||
| myInts.withSpan { span in | ||
| globalSpan = span // error: span value cannot escape the closure | ||
| print(span[myArray.count]) // runtime error: out-of-bounds access |
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myArray was probably intended to be myInts
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