C for Rust Programmers

Re: arrays are pointers.

One of my favorite things to show just how bare this is in C is to show array access commutativity.

  char c = {1,2,3}

  c[1] == *(c + 1)
  
  *(c + 1) == *(1 + c)
  
  c[1] == 1[c]

Any tutorial for C should explain compiler warnings and other tools that help make code safer. In C, you do not rely on the language specification but on tooling. Especially for Rust programmers, this needs to be explained more explicitly. And of course, you can build abstractions using types in C. So a tutorial should also focus on that, and perhaps not start with a low-level string reversal function.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a wild guess.

That boolean is actually mostly an extension of the integer system whereby we now have an integer type that stores only one bit.

Whereby the bit stored either results in a 'true' or 'false' value.

Anyways, I know booleans are useful in systems development when you have strict memory / storage constrains / bandwidth (networks).

Yeah, that works for me.

> the program should check for a null pointer and gracefully exit if one is found: ...

If malloc() fails, there is no need to exit the program completely with exit(), only return from the current function with an error.

It's beautiful to see this perspective! The fact that we are at "whoa, C is fucked up compared to my expectations" instead of "look at Rust's fancy safety stuff" shows that as a field we've started lifting the baseline.

Nowadays I actually believe I'll likely see a world without memory corruption within my lifetime.

It reads really well

>The very first systems programming language I ever learned was Rust. This is uncommon compared to many other programmers; you're more likely to find someone who learned C or C++ first before coming to Rust.

It's becoming increasingly common. Rust is my first systems programming language too. I tried to learn C a few years ago but I found it too austere and prickly, which put me off.

Really just another use Rust instead of c article.

[dead]

> there are plenty of "Rust for C Programmers" articles on the internet, but little to no "C for Rust Programmers" articles out there.

Why would a Rust programmer learn C? Isn't that basically a regression?