<p>What programming languages provide significant static guarantees about race conditions (with respect to memory safety), and what guarantees do they provide?</p>
<p>I am aware that Rust provides some guarantees surrounding race conditions due to its ownership system, but I am not aware of the details. I am also not sure if those are limited to Rust or if any languages without ownership systems provide anything similar. I would be interested to hear both what Rust and what other relevant languages provide.</p>
<p>For the purpose of this question, I am not terribly interested in the details of locks and mutexes themselves, but I am interested in static approaches to avoid deadlocks. I am similarly not interested in the details of ex. transactional memory, but I am in languages that build atop it.</p>

<rust><static-analysis><race-conditions>
What languages provide static guarantees about race conditions?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-23T03:31:52.087Z
Is this "what *languages* provide" or "what language design techniques/features/... provide" static guarantees about race conditions? It sounds lke the former at the end, but I'm not sure how well that works as a question (it's like a shopping question for choosing a race-safe language?).
Michael Homer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-23T04:19:10.780Z
Both: I'd like to know the languages that provide for significant (in the answerer's opinion) race condition guarantees, and the design features of that language that provide for such guarantees. It seemed hard to ask about the language features useful without asking for the languages that feature them.
apropos
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-23T08:41:39.990Z
Table 1 of [this paper](https://michael.homer.nz/Publications/Onward2021/SimpleCapabilityBased-FernandezReyes2021.pdf) lists nine such languages; is that what you're looking for? The related work of [this one](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.06233) notes more, and any pure functional language ought to meet the bar too. The question seems a bit too broad as currently constructed, but I think there's a really good one inside that is more focused on language techniques for preventing data races, which really are not equated with languages (there are quite a lot of RC systems alone!).
Michael Homer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-23T09:01:15.147Z
Alternatively, "the details of what Rust provides" could stand on its own already, and perhaps (notable) languages using some particular model in practice as well. There are quite a few approaches to avoiding race conditions, and different *kinds* of race conditions, and sometimes that wasn't even the point of them, so it could narrow or split up quite a bit if there's something more specific you are looking for, but a high-level version is fine too - it'd just be best not to have the shape of an almost unbounded big list, and to constrain answers to a single question.
Michael Homer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-23T09:51:39.473Z
I'm specifically asking about race conditions with respect to memory safety. I'd consider this to be concurrent access to the same location of memory where at least one access is a write: I think this is the typical definition, though I'm not sure, which is part of why I'm interested in this topic.
apropos
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-23T09:53:16.783Z
That table looks very much like what I'm looking for... I'd be interested to see answers going over the first six entries and languages that feature them, and how they relate to data-race freedom.
apropos
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-23T20:05:27.043Z
Ok, I think I have a better idea of what you’re looking for. Is framing it as “*how* do languages prevent race conditions”, expecting a pretty high-level overview, in line with what you want? There are some nuances in what exactly a race condition is (data race?) and what it means with respect to memory safety (e.g. Java allows data races, but is always memory-safe) that it might be possible to clarify too. That is, is e.g. a memory model requiring sequential consistency in scope for you here? I don’t want to tie you down too much, it’s a good question to have, but very broad currently.
Michael Homer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-10-11T14:30:16.727Z
Isn't "static guarantees about race conditions" the very definition of what a memory model provides? So this question seems to just be "which languages have memory models?"
Nate Eldredge
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-05T12:47:09.457Z
@NateEldredge Perhaps! OP asks for guarantees _about_ race conditions, not _against_ race conditions. So perhaps "doing such and such without such and such (e.g. atomics) _is_ a race condition" works. :-)
Pablo H
# What languages provide static guarantees about race conditions?
Posted by: username_0 on 2024-08-23
What programming languages provide significant static guarantees about race conditions (with respect to memory safety), and what guarantees do they provide?

I am aware that Rust provides some guarantees surrounding race conditions due to its ownership system, but I am not aware of the details. I am also not sure if those are limited to Rust or if any languages without ownership systems provide anything similar. I would be interested to hear both what Rust and what other relevant languages provide.

For the purpose of this question, I am not terribly interested in the details of locks and mutexes themselves, but I am interested in static approaches to avoid deadlocks. I am similarly not interested in the details of ex. transactional memory, but I am in languages that build atop it.
**Tags:** rust static-analysis race-conditions
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Is this "what *languages* provide" or "what language design techniques/features/... provide" static guarantees about race conditions? It sounds lke the former at the end, but I'm not sure how well that works as a question (it's like a shopping question for choosing a race-safe language?).  
> **username_0**: Both: I'd like to know the languages that provide for significant (in the answerer's opinion) race condition guarantees, and the design features of that language that provide for such guarantees. It seemed hard to ask about the language features useful without asking for the languages that feature them.  
> **username_1**: Table 1 of [this paper](https://michael.homer.nz/Publications/Onward2021/SimpleCapabilityBased-FernandezReyes2021.pdf) lists nine such languages; is that what you're looking for? The related work of [this one](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.06233) notes more, and any pure functional language ought to meet the bar too. The question seems a bit too broad as currently constructed, but I think there's a really good one inside that is more focused on language techniques for preventing data races, which really are not equated with languages (there are quite a lot of RC systems alone!).  
> **username_1**: Alternatively, "the details of what Rust provides" could stand on its own already, and perhaps (notable) languages using some particular model in practice as well. There are quite a few approaches to avoiding race conditions, and different *kinds* of race conditions, and sometimes that wasn't even the point of them, so it could narrow or split up quite a bit if there's something more specific you are looking for, but a high-level version is fine too - it'd just be best not to have the shape of an almost unbounded big list, and to constrain answers to a single question.  
> **username_0**: I'm specifically asking about race conditions with respect to memory safety. I'd consider this to be concurrent access to the same location of memory where at least one access is a write: I think this is the typical definition, though I'm not sure, which is part of why I'm interested in this topic.  
> **username_0**: That table looks very much like what I'm looking for... I'd be interested to see answers going over the first six entries and languages that feature them, and how they relate to data-race freedom.  
> **username_1**: Ok, I think I have a better idea of what you’re looking for. Is framing it as “*how* do languages prevent race conditions”, expecting a pretty high-level overview, in line with what you want? There are some nuances in what exactly a race condition is (data race?) and what it means with respect to memory safety (e.g. Java allows data races, but is always memory-safe) that it might be possible to clarify too. That is, is e.g. a memory model requiring sequential consistency in scope for you here? I don’t want to tie you down too much, it’s a good question to have, but very broad currently.  
> **username_2**: Isn't "static guarantees about race conditions" the very definition of what a memory model provides? So this question seems to just be "which languages have memory models?"  
> **username_3**: @NateEldredge Perhaps! OP asks for guarantees _about_ race conditions, not _against_ race conditions. So perhaps "doing such and such without such and such (e.g. atomics) _is_ a race condition" works. :-)  
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## 0 answers
