Rewriting the Unix Stream Editor in Rust [Adventures in Code]

A legacy Unix stream editor implemented in C was reengineered in Rust to explore systems porting, Rust’s safety and abstraction features, and generative AI’s role in code conversion, testing, and refactoring. Benefits and challenges of each are systematically examined.

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE software Vol. 42; no. 5; pp. 21 - 25
Main Author Spinellis, Diomidis
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Alamitos IEEE 01.09.2025
IEEE Computer Society
Subjects
C languages
Central Processing Unit
Codes
Generative artificial intelligence
Reengineering
Software engineering
UNIX
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Summary:A legacy Unix stream editor implemented in C was reengineered in Rust to explore systems porting, Rust’s safety and abstraction features, and generative AI’s role in code conversion, testing, and refactoring. Benefits and challenges of each are systematically examined.
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Commentary-1
content type line 14
ISSN:0740-7459
1937-4194
DOI:10.1109/MS.2025.3579008