Software Reliability C++ vs Zig

A tiny comparison of C++ and Zig in terms of building reliable software

I have spent a lot of my life writing C++ code and if there has been one thing that has bothered me about C++ it is just how fragile it is and generally unhelpful in tracking down bugs.

I don’t have time for an exhaustive check here, so here is just the simplest example I could come up with to make a comparison. We are reading a file which doesn’t exist. In C++ we got:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;
int main (int argc, char const *argv[]) {
    ifstream file("nonexistingfile.txt");

    char buffer[1024];
    file.read(buffer, sizeof(buffer));

    cout << buffer << endl;

    file.close();
    return 0;
}

When I run this it gives me absolutely no output. Nothing tells me the file was not there or that anything went wrong.

Let us look at the equivalent program in Zig:

const std = @import("std");

usingnamespace std.fs;

pub fn main() !void {
    const stdout = std.io.getStdOut().writer();

    const file = try cwd().openFile(
        "nonexistingfile.txt",
        .{ .read = true },
    );
    defer file.close();

    var buffer: [1024]u8 = undefined;
    const size = try file.readAll(buffer[0..]);

    try stdout.writeAll(buffer[0..size]);
}

If I run this I actually get a full stack backtrace:

error: FileNotFound…