ECS 36A Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Integer Overflow, Database Server, Type Inference
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9 Nov 2018
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ECS 36A - Lecture 12 - Types, Variables, Control Flow in Rust
Why our focus is shifting to Rust and away from Python:
- Python was a decent language in the 1990s
- There is no integer overflow in python, integer can be of arbitrary length = a pro
- Programmer can’t provide detailed information to compiler,compiler can’t
aggressively optimize
- Not good b/c don’t have to worry about memory or runtime -- garbage collection
- Makes programs easier, but also more inefficient
- When accessing index, python will check if index is out of bound → avoids index
errors
- Iterator validation -- end up in infinite loops (python can’t do anything about it)
- Not easy to write concurrent programs to take advantage of multiple cores on
computers
- Python isn’t applicable to certain things like databases in the real world --never heard of
efficient database server implemented in Python -->nor web servers and never an
operating system in Python
● Qualities of an efficient language:
○ Doesn’t have garbage collection, program has to manage memory themselves
■ In C, you have to allocate and deallocate yourself
■ C++: sometimes the compiler can help you deallocate memory ,
dangerously, doesn’t make sure if other parts of the program can use that
= serious security vulnerability (slightly better than C)
■ Rust MAKES you allocate memory
■
Learning how Rust avoids most memory-management problems while being almost as efficient
as C/C++
- Rust is a kernel -- manages the operations of the computer and the hardware - most
notably memory and CPU time
- Mozilla is used in Rust to implement Firefox
Integer Overflow Examples in Rust: (didn’t see examples bc won’t see these in python)
Let x: i8 = 127; in rust, you have to bind each variable
& each variable needs a type
Let y = x+1_i8 type inference: sees x which is i8 → so assumes answer should be i8
x = “foo” python catches no error, whereas rust sees that “foo” is not an i8
Let x: i8 = 127;
Let y = x+ “foo” type mismatch again, rust knows you cannot add integer & string
Can explicitly declare type of variable when introduced
In general, compiler cannot recognize integer overflow at Compile Time → will check at runtime