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Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)

(hwisnu.bearblog.dev)
271 points mithcs | 1 comments | 17 Nov 25 10:40 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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cachius ◴[17 Nov 25 12:56 UTC] No.45953162[source]▶
A recent superpower was added by Fil aka the pizlonator who made C more Fil-C with FUGC, a garbage collector with minimal adjustments to existing code, turning it into a memory safe implementation of the C and C++ programming languages you already know and love.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45133938

https://fil-c.org/

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762236 ◴[17 Nov 25 13:30 UTC] No.45953390[source]▶
Why would I want to run a garbage collector and deal with it's performance penalties?
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sesm ◴[17 Nov 25 14:42 UTC] No.45953991[source]▶
IDK about Fil-C, but in Java garbage collector actually speeds up memory management compared to C++ if you measure the throughput. The cost of this is increased worst-case latency.

A CLI tool (which most POSIX tools are) would pick throughput over latency any time.

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1. CyberDildonics ◴[17 Nov 25 15:58 UTC] No.45954762{3}[source]▶
I see this claim all the time without evidence, but it's also apples and oranges. In C++ you can avoid heap allocations so they are rare and large. In java you end up with non stop small heap allocations which is exactly what you try to avoid when you want a program to be fast.

Basically java gc is a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist.