Discussion Thread: DIP 1035-- at system Variables--Community Review Round 2

[Nick Treleaven]

On Friday, 26 February 2021 at 22:29:09 UTC, Max Haughton wrote:
> On Friday, 26 February 2021 at 18:29:26 UTC, Nick Treleaven 
> wrote:
>> Er, doesn't private mean module access? This DIP would help 
>> verify long modules that might inadvertently access unsafe 
>> fields from outside the struct definition, at least in @safe 
>> code.
>
> https://run.dlang.io/is/KalIzj
>
> Yes - however code subject to is supposed to be consumed in a 
> different module for the most part, so this could be a nice 
> side effect but it shouldn't (de jure) guide the actual DIP 
> itself.

It's more than a nice side effect - it's actually necessary to 
enforce a @safe interface for structs that do unsafe things. 
Otherwise changing @safe code can cause memory-safety violations 
- that's contrary to the design goal of @safe. It also would in 
practice mean a programmer/reviewer would have to read every line 
of code in a module every time there was a change - that's not a 
sensible design.