In C the program implicitly assumes there won't be an invalid file name or such thing. If the assumption turns out to be wrong, something unexpected (which may or may not be a memory bug) happens.

In Rust the program explicitly expects there to be an invalid file name or such thing and explicitly panics. This is both safer and more deterministic than C. Additionally, it's easy to grep for things like `panic!`, `unwrap`, `expect`, `unimplemented!`, `todo!`, etc. in your own code or your dependencies' code (assuming you have access to the source). Panicking code also tends to stand out like a sore tooth during code review.

Finally, Rust's approach slightly decreases the odds that someone will be sloppy in the first place. Since you have to explicitly acknowledge the issue and handle it (even if simply by saying `.unwrap()`), there's a chance you'll decide to just handle it properly even though you wouldn't have bothered in C. This is especially the case if you could've handled it properly by shortening `unwrap()` to `?`.