# Ownership guided C to Rust translation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10515 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10515/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 18 Mar 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [CRUST-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for C-to-safe-Rust Transpilation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15254/) (2025)
- [EvoC2Rust: A Skeleton-guided Framework for Project-Level C-to-Rust Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04295/) (2025)
- [Syzygy: Dual Code-Test C to (safe) Rust Translation using LLMs and Dynamic Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14234/) (2024)
- [SACTOR: LLM-Driven Correct and Idiomatic C to Rust Translation with Static Analysis and FFI-Based Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12511/) (2025)
- [Raw Pointer Rewriting with LLMs for Translating C to Safer Rust](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04852/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Agent Collaboration for Correctness Improvements of C to Safe Rust Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03879/) (2025)
- [Project-Level C-to-Rust Translation via Pointer Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10956/) (2025)
- [ENCRUST: Encapsulated Substitution and Agentic Refinement on a Live Scaffold for Safe C-to-Rust Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04527/) (2026)
- [C2RUST-BENCH: A Minimized, Representative Dataset for C-to-Rust Transpilation Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15144/) (2025)
- [BabelCoder: Agentic Code Translation with Specification Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06902/) (2025)
- [His2Trans: A Knowledge-Guided Agentic Framework for Project-Level C-to-Rust Migration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02617/) (2026)
- [ORBIT: Guided Agentic Orchestration for Autonomous C-to-Rust Transpilation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12048/) (2026)
- [Translator vs. Challenger: Adversarial Agentic Learning for C-to-Rust Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15381/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Dubbed a safer C, Rust is a modern programming language that combines memory safety and low-level control. This interesting combination has made Rust very popular among developers and there is a growing trend of migrating legacy codebases (very often in C) to Rust. In this paper, we present a C to Rust translation approach centred around static ownership analysis. We design a suite of analyses that infer ownership models of C pointers and automatically translate the pointers into safe Rust equivalents. The resulting tool, Crown, scales to real-world codebases (half a million lines of code in less than 10 seconds) and achieves a high conversion rate.