Side question and possibly off topic, but is there a formal definition to the term "memory safe"? It seems to mean different things to different people and I'm unsure if I'm just out of the loop and there is an actual definition.
A memory safe language is one for which (a) there is a subset of programs which can be statically proven to not perform unsafe memory operations at runtime and (b) no programs outside of this subset will be accepted. The set of operations that are considered to be unsafe can vary, but always includes writes to unowned memory, and often includes reads from unowned and/or uninitialized memory.
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Side question and possibly off topic, but is there a formal definition to the term "memory safe"? It seems to mean different things to different people and I'm unsure if I'm just out of the loop and there is an actual definition.
A memory safe language is one for which (a) there is a subset of programs which can be statically proven to not perform unsafe memory operations at runtime and (b) no programs outside of this subset will be accepted. The set of operations that are considered to be unsafe can vary, but always includes writes to unowned memory, and often includes reads from unowned and/or uninitialized memory.