Kevin Cozens via Talk said on Tue, 14 Oct 2025 15:14:22 -0400
On 2025-10-10 01:00, William Park via Talk wrote:
Just noticed at Distrowatch. Ubuntu is now using "coreutils" package that has been rewritten in Rust.
A typical way of handling things is "if it ain't broke...". I wonder how much effort has gone in to testing the rewritten programs to ensure they are felt to be bug free. Rewriting the programs in a language that is supposed to avoid memory and garbage collection issues of C/C++ doesn't mean the might not be free of logic errors.
Your preceding sentence is absolutely correct. Logic errors can occur in any language. If the developer writes 9.14159 instead of 3.14159, no compiler or interpreter can detect that. However, Rust catches a lot of logic errors at compile time. I love C. I've used it since 1985. But that also means I've met its disadvantages up close and personal. Languages like Ada and Rust make it much, much more difficult to have a silly error compile. Long term, I think most future stuff written in C, and even more stuff written in C++, which I dislike intensely after using it professionally, would be improved by writing in Rust. Coreutils is an excellent starting place, because writing ls, cat, etc would be trivially easy in Rust, Ada, or any other language. Coreutils is the ideal starting point for a Rust-based future. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com