nubbler's comments

On: Why Is SQLite Coded In C

[nubbler]

Another commenter in this thread used the phrase "complex abomination" which seems more and more apt the more I learn about Rust.

[J_Shelby_J → nubbler]

Nothing in this world is perfect, but this behavior is less of an abomination than whatever a junior dev on a timeline might write to handle this condition.

On: Why Is SQLite Coded In C

[nubbler]

In the first case, if it is actually unreachable, I would never want that code ending up in my binary at all. It must be optimised out.

Your second case implies that it is reachable.

[thayne → nubbler]

In the first case, it often is optimized out. But the optimizer isn't perfect, and can't detect every case where it is unreachable.

If you have the second case, I would much rather have a panic than undefined behavior. As mentioned in another comment, in c indexing an array is semantically equivalent to:

    if (i < len(arr)) arr[i] else UB()

In fact a c compiler could put in a check and abort if it is out of bounds, like rust does and still be in spec. But the undefined behavior could also cause memory corruption, or cause some other subtle bug.