RUSTSEC-2023-0055

lexical contains multiple soundness issues:

1. Bytes::read() allows creating instances of types with invalid bit patterns
2. BytesIter::read() advances iterators out of bounds
3. The <code>BytesIter</code> trait has safety invariants but is public and not marked <code>unsafe</code>
4. <code>write_float()</code> calls <code>MaybeUninit::assume_init()</code> on uninitialized data, which is is not allowed by the Rust abstract machine
5. <code>radix()</code> calls <code>MaybeUninit::assume_init()</code> on uninitialized data, which is is not allowed by the Rust abstract machine

The crate also has some correctness issues.

Alternatives

For quickly parsing floating-point numbers third-party crates are no longer needed. A fast float parsing algorithm by the author of lexical has been merged into libcore.

For quickly parsing integers, consider atoi and btoi crates (100% safe code). atoi_radix10 provides even faster parsing, but only with -C target-cpu=native, and at the cost of some unsafe.

For formatting integers in a #[no_std] context consider the <code>numtoa</code> crate.

For working with big numbers consider num-bigint and num-traits.