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Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

> In its zeal, Rust won't let you modify different elements of the same array from different threads (an issue that comes up almost immediately in the OP) even though you know with perfect mathematical certainty that to do so is perfectly safe.

To be clear, Rust will let you do this, as long as you're communicating that you know this to the compiler. split_at_mut and scoped threads are two ways that this is possible without requiring you to write your own unsafe code.

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Right, the OP solved this using Rayon's par_chunks_mut, then enumerate and foreach over that, so I assumed that's the most ergonomic way to work around the issue. I certainly wasn't claiming that there are no workarounds, merely noting that from my - obviously biased - point of view this looks like yet another annoying hoop to jump through. There's obviously the opposite point of view which holds this up as a useful safety measure and determining which is correct requires knowing the context you work in. Given the vanishingly tiny amount of time I've spent on debugging issues this restriction might have prevented Rust just looks very unergonomic to me, but the opposite perspective can be just as valid given the right context.

I think the key difference here is that in your code you’re saying you “know” that it’s safe to write to these certain sections of the array from different threads. That’s an invariant that‘s held in your memory (or in a comment maybe).

The rust equivalent is doing the exact same thing but requires you to formalise that invariant in your code by using one of the methods defined above.

I can see how initially this looks like an extra hoop to jump through but after using it for a while I’ve found the opposite is true: because those invariants are checked by the compiler it’s one less thing I have to keep in my head and I can concentrate on the real problem.

And also one less thing to transfer to the heads of anyone else that might need/want to understand the code. (Often the author him or herself at some point in the future, right?) Though equivalent facilities are available in C++ [1][2] (and can now/soon be enforced[3]).

[1] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus/blob/master...

[2] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus/blob/master...

[3] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/scpptool

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