R libraries implement performance-critical code in C++. But memory bugs in C++ code crash R, such as in this screenshot, even though R is designed to be memory safe.
fixest is an excellent library but a semi-frequent offender. And I've had this happen with other libraries too.
As someone who is using R because I am not prepared to debug C++, this can pretty much break a library for me. I hope that eventually Rust can take over C++'s role in #rstats
@Mehrad I take it you consider R to not be memory safe. Do you mind sharing why?
The specific issue noted here looks like a null pointer dereference if I’m not mistaken. In R one doesn’t work with raw pointers so such a bug could not occur by design.
@gabornyeki no, I genuinely have no idea and that's why I'm asking for reference. R in a scripting language and therefore the interpreter should be memory safe, to make the language memory safe (or at least this is my understanding because memory allocation is done by interpreter and not the R script.
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