New Scientist | "Cyclone" blows computer bugs out of code

A new computer language designed to avoid unforeseen programming errors could prevent many computer security breaches, according to the US researchers behind the project.

The above link was posted to our local Low Level Programming newsgroup by one of my students (thanks Chris). In a followup to that post I recommended that the students check out the Cyclone home page...

Cyclone is a programming language that is as C-like as possible while preventing unsafe behavior (buffer overflows, dangling pointers, format string attacks, and so on).

....especially the on-line manual. Some great insights into the pitfalls that C programmers get into. Even if they never use Cyclone they should all be aware of the traps that C lays for the unwary programmer and take steps to avoid these by following safe programming practices wherever possible.

Q: Would a C environment that results in safer programming not have been called Condom? ;-)