Rust and C Memory Allocators Clash: A Silent Disaster

This article recounts a programmer's experience with a memory management interview question involving Rust and C, sparking a deep dive into the complexities of allocator interoperability. By building a comprehensive testing framework, the author experimentally explores the mixing of different allocators, discovering that such mixing frequently results in silent memory corruption. The article delves into the underlying concepts of virtual memory, heap structure, and CPU cache architecture, analyzing allocator characteristics and ultimately summarizing the risks and debugging strategies involved in mixing allocators. The findings highlight the insidious nature of silent memory corruption, where seemingly successful execution masks underlying vulnerabilities.