Cyclone (programming language)
Cyclone is a safe dialect of the C programming language. It was developed at Cornell University and AT&T Labs Research, with the goal of providing memory safety and preventing common errors found in C programs, such as buffer overflows and format string vulnerabilities, while maintaining performance comparable to C.
Cyclone achieves memory safety through a combination of techniques, including:
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Region-based memory management: Cyclone uses regions, which are essentially memory arenas, to manage memory allocation and deallocation. This allows the compiler to track the lifetime of objects more precisely than manual memory management, reducing the risk of memory leaks and dangling pointers.
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Tagged pointers: Cyclone employs tagged pointers, which embed additional information about the pointed-to object within the pointer itself. This information can include the object's size or type, enabling runtime checks for validity and preventing out-of-bounds access.
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Non-null pointers: Cyclone encourages the use of non-null pointers, explicitly requiring programmers to handle cases where a pointer might be null. This helps prevent null pointer dereferences, a common source of errors in C programs.
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Safe pointers and fat pointers: Cyclone uses various pointer types, including safe pointers that are guaranteed to be valid, and fat pointers that carry extra information about the pointed-to object's size. This helps prevent buffer overflows and other memory-related errors.
Cyclone aimed to provide a migration path for existing C code by offering a high degree of compatibility. While not a drop-in replacement, it allowed developers to gradually adopt Cyclone's safety features while retaining the performance and low-level control of C. The language's syntax is largely similar to C, with extensions and modifications to enforce safety.
Cyclone is primarily a research language and has not seen widespread adoption in industry. However, its concepts and techniques have influenced the design of other safe programming languages and have contributed to the ongoing research in memory safety and programming language security. Its development explored trade-offs between safety, performance, and compatibility with existing C codebases.