Programming Rust, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1. Systems Programmers Can Have Nice Things

A Note for Early Release Readers

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In certain contexts—for example the context Rust is targeting—being 10x or even 2x faster than the competition is a make-or-break thing. It decides the fate of a system in the market, as much as it would in the hardware market.

Graydon Hoare

All computers are now parallel... Parallel programming is programming.

Michael McCool et al., Structured Parallel Programming

TrueType parser flaw used by nation-state attacker for surveillance; all software is security-sensitive.

Andy Wingo

We chose to open our book with the three quotes above for a reason. But let’s start with a mystery. What does the following C program do?

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
  unsigned long a[1];
  a[3] = 0x7ffff7d48a38UL;
  return 0;
}

On Jason’s laptop this morning, this program printed:

undef: Error: .netrc file is readable by others.
undef: Remove 'password' line or make file unreadable by others.

Then it crashed. If you try it on your machine, it may do ...