1 point
D kind of did that (C pointers are still an option, alongside with the preferred dynamic arrays, which has the memory safety features), and once I’ve seen a C compiler fork that retroactively added D-style memory safety features, although they also very much insisted on the “const by default” mantra.
2 points
I think this is one of those things where there’s no “kind of”. Pointers were added for a reason, you’re probably not going to implement a database very well without them. If you use them, at some scale you’re inevitably going to have memory bugs. Technically, if you were to only use hardcoded printfs, C is memory safe too.
