Safety critical sofware has a lot of overlap with the requirements for high security software. One of the criteria is to use a language which has its syntax and sematics rigorously defined. Thus one would use a language like Spark to implement security related modules which can more readily be proven correct.
If the syntax and semantics of D are not rigorously defined then it should not be used for secure applications.
For Spark see http://www.praxis-cs.co.uk/sparkada/
They also have an interesting list of security/ integrity related cases where Spark has been used, e.g., the security modules for the SmartCard (system using a credit card with an embedded chip)
http://www.praxis-cs.co.uk/sparkada/publications.asp
Jim Ronback System Safety Engineer
Greenarrow 1 wrote:
There is a comparison chart of different functions of D vs other languages at this site:
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/comparison.html
Regards, George Greenarrow1 InNetInvestigations-Forensics
----- Original Message ----- From: "James Walden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Kenneth R. van Wyk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: [SC-L] Anyone looked at security features of D programming language?
Kenneth R. van Wyk wrote:
Has anyone here looked into the security strengths/weaknesses of D? Care to
discuss or summarize for the rest of us? Does it inherit the problems of C
while trying to improve on C++ et al?
I haven't examined D myself, but I would also be interested if anyone could recommend a good paper or site comparing programming language security features, either for just C-family languages like C/C++, C#, Cyclone, and D, or for a broader spectrum of language types. The closest document to this type of comparison that I've read is section 10 of David Wheeler's excellent Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO, but newer languages like Cyclone and D aren't represented in that section.
-- James Walden, Ph.D. Visiting Assistant Professor of EECS The University of Toledo @ LCCC http://www.eecs.utoledo.edu/~jwalden/
