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points by tialaramex 1 day ago | 0 comments

The technology you want for this sort of work is WUFFS, for Wrangling Untrusted File Formats Safely.

Rust is a general purpose programming language, which is great if your problem might be something never imagined before, but this literally isn't our first rodeo, we have wrangled lots of file formats before, we should use a language purpose-built to do that safely.

[–] zamalek 1 day ago

> Rust is a general purpose programming language

I don't understand how I hit the anti-Rust tripwire here:

> My comment: any memory safe language will do

[–] tialaramex 1 day ago

Not an anti-Rust tripwire. Just that WUFFS is the appropriate technology.

I like 4th edition D&D but if you're trying to make a story about nuanced inter-personal conflict in which there's no actual violence it's just not the right roleplaying system and so I'm not going to agree with your choice to recommend 4eD&D as the system for the story "Love and Jealousy in the Elven Forest"

I've written a whole bunch of Rust, and hardly any WUFFS - but, I wasn't writing code for Wrangling Untrusted File Formats and that's very much what you're doing in a PDF parser.

[–] jeffbee 1 day ago

I am a big fan of WUFFS but some recent developments by people assisted by AIs writing format parsers in other languages has made me question whether it will be maintained or forgotten.