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

[Paulo Pinto]

On Tuesday, 2 March 2021 at 22:06:30 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 March 2021 at 21:41:40 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
>> You are conflating types and values. Pointer *values* can be 
>> either safe or unsafe, depending on what they point to. 
>> Pointer *types* are always unsafe, because they include both 
>> safe and unsafe values.
>
> A type-system can be made to distinguish between safe and 
> unsafe pointers.
>
> A type is just a tag stuck onto a value.

For example, Active Oberon, Modula-3, C#, F#, Swift, Go, all have 
this pointer distinction.

Pointers are always safe, unless explicitly marked otherwise or 
used in unsafe contexts, converting between both types is also 
explicit.