الدوال غير الآمنة (Unsafe Functions)
Calling Unsafe Functions
A function or method can be marked unsafe
if it has extra preconditions you must uphold to avoid undefined behaviour:
extern "C" { fn abs(input: i32) -> i32; } fn main() { let emojis = "🗻∈🌏"; // SAFETY: The indices are in the correct order, within the bounds of the // string slice, and lie on UTF-8 sequence boundaries. unsafe { println!("emoji: {}", emojis.get_unchecked(0..4)); println!("emoji: {}", emojis.get_unchecked(4..7)); println!("emoji: {}", emojis.get_unchecked(7..11)); } println!("char count: {}", count_chars(unsafe { emojis.get_unchecked(0..7) })); // SAFETY: `abs` doesn't deal with pointers and doesn't have any safety // requirements. unsafe { println!("Absolute value of -3 according to C: {}", abs(-3)); } // Not upholding the UTF-8 encoding requirement breaks memory safety! // println!("emoji: {}", unsafe { emojis.get_unchecked(0..3) }); // println!("char count: {}", count_chars(unsafe { // emojis.get_unchecked(0..3) })); } fn count_chars(s: &str) -> usize { s.chars().count() }
Writing Unsafe Functions
You can mark your own functions as unsafe
if they require particular conditions to avoid undefined behaviour.
/// Swaps the values pointed to by the given pointers. /// /// # Safety /// /// The pointers must be valid and properly aligned. unsafe fn swap(a: *mut u8, b: *mut u8) { let temp = *a; *a = *b; *b = temp; } fn main() { let mut a = 42; let mut b = 66; // SAFETY: ... unsafe { swap(&mut a, &mut b); } println!("a = {}, b = {}", a, b); }
Calling Unsafe Functions
get_unchecked
, like most _unchecked
functions, is unsafe, because it can create UB if the range is incorrect. abs
is incorrect for a different reason: it is an external function (FFI). Calling external functions is usually only a problem when those functions do things with pointers which might violate Rust's memory model, but in general any C function might have undefined behaviour under any arbitrary circumstances.
The "C"
in this example is the ABI; other ABIs are available too.
Writing Unsafe Functions
We wouldn't actually use pointers for a swap
function - it can be done safely with references.
Note that unsafe code is allowed within an unsafe function without an unsafe
block. We can prohibit this with #[deny(unsafe_op_in_unsafe_fn)]
. Try adding it and see what happens. This will likely change in a future Rust edition.