var x int = 5
var i interface{} = &x
*(i.(*string)) = "boom"I said "it's unsafe", not "it's not safer than void*".
> (i.e. exit cleanly without corrupting memory).
This makes no sense. If it exits, who cares if the memory of the process is corrupted?
Also, this is the point: it exits instead of the compiler telling you this code will crash before you ship it.
That's the point of static type safety (which Go doesn't provide in this case): it lets you ship code that is provably incorrect and that will not work once deployed (it will exit, like you say).
This is why I said "it's unsafe".
People care when memory is corrupted without the process exiting. It is usually better for a program to crash than for it to continue having corrupted its data. The former gives you x-ray machines which sometimes won't start, whilst the latter gives you x-ray machines which sometimes give the patient cancer.
I say better, not best. Best, obviously, is for as many failure modes as possible to be detected before the code is deployed. Particularly if you're programming a machine that can kill people. But in the comparison between Go's interface{} and C's void*, neither language has that option.
And it's even better to no let this program get corrupted data in the first place, which languages with a weak type system (such as Go) allow to happen whenever you use `interface{}`.
I'm sorry, but then you're simply in the wrong thread. You where replying to a interface{} vs. void comment, so that's what you should be talking about.
if (bad_thing)
return ERR_BAD_THING;
... code here to turn off controlled device ...