Famed software engineer DJB tries Fil-C… likes what he sees

Daniel J. Bernstein (DJB), renowned cryptographer and author of djbdns and qmail, has published favorable notes on Fil-C, a new memory-safe C/C++ compiler based on Clang. He reports high compatibility with existing libraries and applications, with most working without modifications. Fil-C aims to address C's memory safety vulnerabilities without changing pointer sizes, offering better compatibility than hardware approaches like CHERI. While compiled code runs slower and isn't fully ABI-compatible with standard C, it could secure discrete components of large C systems, positioning itself as an alternative to rewriting code in Rust or other modern systems languages.