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Fil-C: Garbage In, Memory Safety Out [video]

37 points by Bootvis ago | 22 comments

dang |next [-]

There are getting to be quite a lot of these so I'll do it CPS style:

Memory Safe Context Switching - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48727177 - June 2026 (30 comments)

Memory Safe Inline Assembly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48606096 - June 2026 (47 comments)

The Fil-C Optimized Calling Convention - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48162876 - May 2026 (32 comments)

A simplified model of Fil-C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47810872 - April 2026 (136 comments)

Pizlix: Memory Safe Linux from Scratch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46260852 - Dec 2025 (30 comments)

Linux Sandboxes and Fil-C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46259064 - Dec 2025 (156 comments)

Ported freetype, fontconfig, harfbuzz, and graphite to Fil-C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46090009 - Nov 2025 (56 comments)

A Note on Fil-C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45842494 - Nov 2025 (210 comments)

Fil-C: A memory-safe C implementation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45842242 - Nov 2025 (1 comment)

Notes by djb on using Fil-C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45788040 - Nov 2025 (246 comments)

for more, goto https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45792588

wasmperson |next |previous [-]

He claims that all syscalls are safe because they're implemented by his custom libc, but that libc then calls out to the system libc, where the system calls are unsafe. He then claims that this is unlike rust, where making a syscall is unsafe. If you stick to the rust standard library in the same way that fil-c programs stick to the fil-c standard library, then all of your rust "system calls" are safe, too.

Someone in the audience also pointed out that a tool like this could be used to compile rust programs, not just C programs, in which case it's odd to hear Fil-C repeatedly framed as a language in opposition to rust rather than as a tool which might complement it.

modeless |root |parent |next [-]

Rust doesn't runtime validate that your usage of syscalls is memory safe, while Fil-C does. For example you can call mmap in Fil-C and it is still guaranteed to be memory safe, while in Rust you can easily violate memory safety by calling mmap. This seems like an unambiguous improvement to me. This is as memory safe as it is possible to be on a system with a kernel that is not memory safe.

Adding Fil-C-like runtime checks to Rust is definitely an interesting direction.

quotemstr |root |parent [-]

Okay, let me know when I can call process_vm_writev or ptrace and have Fil-C verify safety properties on the result.

cypherpunk666 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

indeed, the ideas could be used more widely.

fil-c runs on linux.

what if linux ran on fil-c?

LoganDark |root |parent |next |previous [-]

> Someone in the audience also pointed out that a tool like this could be used to compile rust programs, not just C programs, in which case it's odd to hear Fil-C repeatedly framed as a language in opposition to rust rather than as a tool which might complement it.

You can combine both approaches for sure, but that doesn't change that they are indeed separate approaches. One (Rust) intends to characterize and prevent undefined behavior at compile time, and another (Fil-C) intends to make undefined behavior impossible at runtime, as evidenced by decisions like (for example) making unsafe usage of setjmp/longjmp safe.

You could sort of achieve "safety-in-depth" by combining both approaches, but Rust prefers to prevent all undefined behavior statically, and Fil-C prefers to focus on dynamic approaches. They have real differences, so that's probably what comes off as "oppositional"

raggi |root |parent |next [-]

This presentation wasn’t too bad in terms of us vs theming, but in general throughout the lifetime of the project there’s been a strong us vs them rhetoric. I think it’s working as a marketing tactic to some extent but there are better, albeit harder ways to market the thing.

LoganDark |root |parent [-]

Rust generally invites us vs them everywhere because it's just so ambitious and attractive (to some). Fil-C probably receives questions all the time about why they don't just do X or Y that Rust does. Maybe they end up supporting their position against that type of pressure and it looks like they're opposing Rust when all they're doing is justifying themselves.

uecker |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Arguably the most important memory safety property, i.e. bounds checking for dynamic arrays, is also not statically checked in Rust.

woodruffw |root |parent |next [-]

How would Rust perform static checks on dynamic bounds? That seems like an impossible order, i.e. not a reasonable evaluation criteria for any (general-purpose) language.

(I'm separately skeptical that it's the most important memory safety property; I suspect that a review of Chrome and Firefox 0days would show that UAFs and type confusion are, at least to attackers, equally if not more important.)

zem |root |parent |next [-]

ATS could probably do some of this by constructing proofs about the bounds and indices - not in the completely general case of course, but for at least some fraction of what a language without dependent types would have to defer to runtime

ratmice |root |parent [-]

those are not dynamic bounds.

LoganDark |root |parent |previous [-]

Presumably, they're talking about the possibility of explicitly replacing dynamic bounds checks in cases where it's statically provable that the access will not overrun. That doesn't necessarily mean you lose cases where you genuinely can't prove such a thing, but rather that it would be possible to opt into compiler assistance with proving it, rather than hoping LLVM will have your back. At least, that's how I'd envision such a thing for Rust. This would be similar to how you can already choose whether to invite more of the borrow checker by using references directly, or to do the checks at runtime with Rc/RefCell, etc.

haberman |root |parent |next [-]

> rather than hoping LLVM will have your back

My thought here is to proactively verify that LLVM elided the automatic bounds checks in places where you believe that your explicit checks should be sufficient.

That was a key part of my article on "No-Panic Rust": https://blog.reverberate.org/2025/02/03/no-panic-rust.html ("A Dance With The Optimizer")

woodruffw |root |parent |previous [-]

Yeah, that seems like a nice thing that Rust could offer. It strikes me as a weird thing to get hung up on, though, given that the norm in compiled languages - including C - is to express your bounds such that an optimizing compiler can (but won't necessarily) eliminate them.

(You mentioned WUFFS below, which is why I qualified with general-purpose! One thing that WUFFS does that I think Rust could add pretty easily is provable indexing, e.g. allow me to use a `u8` to index a `[u8; 256]` without having to widen to a `usize` first and hope that LLVM optimizes it back out.)

LoganDark |root |parent |previous [-]

It's possible to do this (WUFFS does it) but it's so invasive that, well, you basically end up with WUFFS. You end up having to track every set of possible and impossible values at every location, etc. (during each program location too.) WUFFS certainly has its place and I've kind of been itching to try it out myself, but I think getting to the point where dynamic arrays can be statically bounds-checked would have highly disabled Rust.

n42 |root |parent |previous [-]

The combination of static safety gracefully degrading to runtime safety where not provable is interesting to me

LoganDark |root |parent [-]

This is sort of already possible in Rust when you use safe primitives (e.g., RefCell), but it doesn't cover unsafe code invoking Undefined Behavior. Placing something like Fil-C around unsafe code could prove to be interesting, especially since current approaches rely on interpretation (Miri, Soteria Rust) rather than translation.

cypherpunk666 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

also: why not use fil-c to improve cython, and the ffi.

quotemstr |root |parent |previous [-]

Both Rust and Fil-C have unsafe blocks, but in Fil-C latter system, only Pizlo gets to write them. Why am I not filled with confidence?

LugosFergus |previous [-]

I was just thinking that we were overdue for a Fil-C post on HN.

quotemstr |root |parent [-]

It's funny how every one of these posts is the same, too. There's this weird willful blindness to the problems and imperfections in Fil-C --- just shouting down. That's what makes Fil-C a meme language and Rust a serious one.

Rust, for all its faults, at least engages with its critics. I've long faulted Rust's use of Result over exceptions, for example, but the maintainers at least acknowledge that other options exist and each has trade-offs. Not Pizlo and his fans.