If I could wave a magic wand I'd have the C standards committee:
1. Add safe arrays to the next version of the standard.
These arrays would work much like C arrays do, but taking a reference or passing to another function would pass an array_ref type rather than decaying to a pointer. Under the covers an array_ref would be a (size_t, address). Taking a reference to an element in the middle of an array would get the correct size of the reference.
The default mode would be to bounds-check accesses to array_ref, aborting on failure. Since the array_ref knows its size it would be easy to check the index and return an error code if you prefer not to abort ("if (i >= sizeof some_array_param)").
2. Make signed integer math trap on overflow and add wrapping variants (similar to Swift's &-prefixed versions of operators). For some projects this would be too disruptive but compilers would undoubtedly offer options to disable it. But the fact that this existed at all would immediately start pushing people to adopt it for the same reason people like to adopt -Weverything or -Wall.
2b. Add generic functions to check for potential overflow so we can have an officially blessed way to say "if x + y > INT_MAX" with no undefined behavior. This is so easy to accidentally get wrong without any obvious indication that you've introduced undefined behavior.
3. Some blessed reference counting library and/or types. If C had something to say about memory management other than "you're on your own" it would be a big boon to eliminating dangling pointers and use-after-free. I recognize there are many contexts where this isn't appropriate (e.g. embedded that statically allocates all memory at startup) but a lot of C code could adopt a stdlib-provided reference counting system if it existed. ARC has proven you can get everything except cycle detection without too much overhead.
I'm sure people could quibble with the exact solutions I've proposed and there may be other things I've missed, but I'd really like to see the standard admit that C has a really nasty legacy and do something about it.
1. Add safe arrays to the next version of the standard.
These arrays would work much like C arrays do, but taking a reference or passing to another function would pass an array_ref type rather than decaying to a pointer. Under the covers an array_ref would be a (size_t, address). Taking a reference to an element in the middle of an array would get the correct size of the reference.
The default mode would be to bounds-check accesses to array_ref, aborting on failure. Since the array_ref knows its size it would be easy to check the index and return an error code if you prefer not to abort ("if (i >= sizeof some_array_param)").
2. Make signed integer math trap on overflow and add wrapping variants (similar to Swift's &-prefixed versions of operators). For some projects this would be too disruptive but compilers would undoubtedly offer options to disable it. But the fact that this existed at all would immediately start pushing people to adopt it for the same reason people like to adopt -Weverything or -Wall.
2b. Add generic functions to check for potential overflow so we can have an officially blessed way to say "if x + y > INT_MAX" with no undefined behavior. This is so easy to accidentally get wrong without any obvious indication that you've introduced undefined behavior.
3. Some blessed reference counting library and/or types. If C had something to say about memory management other than "you're on your own" it would be a big boon to eliminating dangling pointers and use-after-free. I recognize there are many contexts where this isn't appropriate (e.g. embedded that statically allocates all memory at startup) but a lot of C code could adopt a stdlib-provided reference counting system if it existed. ARC has proven you can get everything except cycle detection without too much overhead.
I'm sure people could quibble with the exact solutions I've proposed and there may be other things I've missed, but I'd really like to see the standard admit that C has a really nasty legacy and do something about it.