Turning Off Safety Checks

Checked Arithmetic

Don’t Panic

Scripts under normal builds of Rhai never crash the host system – any panic is a bug.

By default, all arithmetic calculations in Rhai are checked, meaning that the script terminates with a runtime error whenever it detects a numeric over-flow/under-flow condition or an invalid floating-point operation.

This checking can be turned off via the unchecked feature for higher performance (but higher risks as well).

let x = 1_000_000_000_000;

x * x;      // Normal build - runtime error: multiplication overflow

x * x;      // 'unchecked' debug build - panic!
            // 'unchecked' release build - overflow with no error

x / 0;      // Normal build - runtime error: division by zero

x / 0;      // 'unchecked' build - panic!

Other Safety Checks

In addition to overflows, there are many other safety checks performed by Rhai at runtime. unchecked turns them all off as well, such as…

Infinite loops

// Normal build - runtime error: exceeds maximum number of operations
loop {
    foo();
}

// 'unchecked' build - never terminates!
loop {
    foo();
}

Infinite recursion

fn foo() {
    foo();
}

foo();      // Normal build - runtime error: exceeds maximum stack depth

foo();      // 'unchecked' build - panic due to stack overflow!

Gigantic data structures

let x = [];

// Normal build - runtime error: array exceeds maximum size
loop {
    x += 42;
}

// 'unchecked' build - panic due to out-of-memory!
loop {
    x += 42;
}

Improper range iteration

// Normal build - runtime error: zero step
for x in range(0, 10, 0) { ... }

// 'unchecked' build - never terminates!
for x in range(0, 10, 0) { ... }

// Normal build - empty range
for x in range(0, 10, -1) { ... }

// 'unchecked' build - panic due to numeric underflow!
for x in range(0, 10, -1) { ... }