Re: The D Programming Language
James Kanze wrote:
David Abrahams wrote:
Whether undefined behavior is badly expressed in today's running C++
programs is another matter.
I think that Andrei's point was that as soon as you start
restricting how it is expressed, it's no longer totally
undefined.
No, it's still totally undefined from the programming language point of
view, even if it's fully defined in practice (the OS terminating the
process with the associated equivalent of a core dump, say). That is, a
program that has done something for which the language specification
does not define a behavior cannot depend on a certain outcome and
reflect that outcome in its code.
When the behavior is defined, you can dereference a NULL pointer, then
catch the resulting NullPointerException and continue execution, and
the OS is not allowed to say that you did something wrong and terminate
your process; what you did was permitted and defined by the spec.
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