[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0138 UnsafeBytes

[Karl Wagner]

>>   1. It points into memory that it does not own. The developer must do something to to manage the memory’s lifetime.
  

  
Isn't that just a pointer? Is it really necessary to say "unsafe" and "pointer"?
  

  
And if we did want to make it explicit, perhaps we say "unowned" instead, to make it clear how it is unsafe. "RawBufferPointer"/"UnownedRawBufferPointer" sound pretty good to me. You can derive some pretty solid expectations from those names.
  
  
  
    
 Karl
  
  
  

  
  
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> On Sep 6, 2016 at 10:59 pm,  <Andrew Trick (mailto:atrick at apple.com)>  wrote:
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> > On Sep 2, 2016, at 7:36 PM, Karl via swift-evolution  <swift-evolution at swift.org (mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org)>  wrote:
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> > > * Does this proposal fit well with the feel and direction of Swift?
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> >   Yes, but I’m not sure about the “Unsafe” part of “UnsafeBytes” — what is unsafe about getting the byte-representation of a value?
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> >   As I understand it, “Raw” is what we use for “untyped”, so might I suggest “RawBytes"?         
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> It’s annoying, but a strict requirement in Swift that any “unsafe” operation be marked with the word “Unsafe” either at that point or in some enclosing scope. Unsafe broadly refers to various forms of memory unsafety. Unsafe bytes is actually safe with respect to pointer aliasing but it is unsafe because
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> 1. It points into memory that it does not own. The developer must do something to to manage the memory’s lifetime.
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> 2. It does not perform bounds-checking in release mode.
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> In both those respects, it’s just like UnsafeBufferPointer.
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> -Andy
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