Memory Safety Patterns by @wshobson · Skillet

Memory Safety Patterns

Implement memory-safe programming with RAII, ownership, smart pointers, and resource management across Rust, C++, and C. Use when writing safe systems code, managing resources, or preventing memory bugs.

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SKILL.md

memory-safety-patterns

Memory Safety Patterns

Cross-language patterns for memory-safe programming including RAII, ownership, smart pointers, and resource management.

When to Use This Skill

Writing memory-safe systems code
Managing resources (files, sockets, memory)
Preventing use-after-free and leaks
Implementing RAII patterns
Choosing between languages for safety
Debugging memory issues

Core Concepts

1. Memory Bug Categories

Bug Type	Description	Prevention
Use-after-free	Access freed memory	Ownership, RAII
Double-free	Free same memory twice	Smart pointers
Memory leak	Never free memory	RAII, GC
Buffer overflow	Write past buffer end	Bounds checking
Dangling pointer	Pointer to freed memory	Lifetime tracking
Data race	Concurrent unsynchronized access	Ownership, Sync

2 files · 13 KB3 KB

Version history

Manual (C) → Smart Pointers (C++) → Ownership (Rust) → GC (Go, Java)
Less safe                                              More safe
More control                                           Less control

# AddressSanitizer (Clang/GCC)
clang++ -fsanitize=address -g source.cpp

# Valgrind
valgrind --leak-check=full ./program

# Rust Miri (undefined behavior detector)
cargo +nightly miri run

# ThreadSanitizer
clang++ -fsanitize=thread -g source.cpp

Memory Safety Patterns

Memory Safety Patterns

When to Use This Skill

Core Concepts

1. Memory Bug Categories

2. Safety Spectrum

Detailed patterns and worked examples

Best Practices

Do's

Don'ts

Debugging Tools