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Concept
Undefined behavior
Résumé
In computer programming, undefined behavior (UB) is the result of executing a program whose behavior is prescribed to be unpredictable, in the language specification to which the computer code adheres. This is different from unspecified behavior, for which the language specification does not prescribe a result, and implementation-defined behavior that defers to the documentation of another component of the platform (such as the ABI or the translator documentation).
In the C community, undefined behavior may be humorously referred to as "nasal demons", after a comp.std.c post that explained undefined behavior as allowing the compiler to do anything it chooses, even "to make demons fly out of your nose".
Some programming languages allow a program to operate differently or even have a different control flow than the source code, as long as it exhibits the same user-visible side effects, if undefined behavior never happens during program execution. Undefined behavior is the name of a list of conditions that the program must not meet.
In the early versions of C, undefined behavior's primary advantage was the production of performant compilers for a wide variety of machines: a specific construct could be mapped to a machine-specific feature, and the compiler did not have to generate additional code for the runtime to adapt the side effects to match semantics imposed by the language. The program source code was written with prior knowledge of the specific compiler and of the platforms that it would support.
However, progressive standardization of the platforms has made this less of an advantage, especially in newer versions of C. Now, the cases for undefined behavior typically represent unambiguous bugs in the code, for example indexing an array outside of its bounds. By definition, the runtime can assume that undefined behavior never happens; therefore, some invalid conditions do not need to be checked against.
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