FYI there is an open source reimplementation of Flash from scratch called Ruffle that should solve all the security issues that Flash had. It runs on WASM so it’s compatible with modern browsers. The New York Times is using it to bring back some old interactive/animated pages that relied on Flash.

What? You can easily escape from it if there are better alternatives you can use.

So there is no general escape hatch.

Pointing at one language and saying it is not easy to code like it is another language is a pointless argument.

I’m not arguing that it is easier to code in C# than in Rust, just that this particular escape hatch is possible in C# and not in Rust. It’s just an observation.

They all differ for good reasons and as long as you can solve similar problems in both, even if in different ways then what does it matter that you cannot do it in the same way?

It does not really matter, but does it have to?

You dont write code like this in rust.

I perfectly agree, that would be horrible code! I would generally try to restructure my code, making it better fit the actual lifetimes of the data I’m working with. The point in the article is that you can’t really escape from this. I’m not arguing this is a real problem, and I don’t think the article is neither, just pointing out that this is something you can easily do in C# and not in Rust. It’s just a difference between the two languages.

I can agree that the example function is not the best usecase. But the point still stand that there’s no realistic escape hatch from lifetimes and memory management in Rust.

Cow does not work when you are actually required to return a reference, e.g. if you’re working with some other crate that requires that. Cow also has some more strict requirements on reborrows (i.e. you can reborrow a &'short &'long T to a &'long T, but you can only reborrow a &'short Cow<'long, T> to a &'short T).

LazyLock can solve very specific issues like static, but is not a general escape hatch. Again, the example is not the best to showcase this, but imagine if you have to perform this operation for an unknown amount of runtime values. LazyLock will only work for the very first one.

(Note that I’m not the article author)

In this example, you could have just made a constant with value 0 and returned a reference to that. It would also have a 'static lifetime and there would be no leaking.

I believe the intention was to demonstrate something that works with runtime values too, and a constant 0 does not.

Btw you can just write &0 to do what you proposed, there’s no need for an explicit constant/static.