5 ms·

People who know how to use C rarely if ever have problems with undefined behavior. I particularly have written a huge amount of C code and my bugs have never be

People who know how to use C rarely if ever have problems with undefined behavior. I particularly have written a huge amount of C code and my bugs have never been related to undefined behavior. This is an idea that has been spread to make people even more afraid of using C/C++. While there is a possibility of finding these problems, in practice it is almost a non-issue.

tejuis 3y ago
Same here, no problems with undefined behavior. Also, no memory issues either after done with code finalization using Valgrind.
- kaba0 3y ago
  “no memory issues in the tested state space”. That’s the only thing Valgrind can say. But it says nothing how a run with different input would behave, it just might segfault/leak/use after free/UB.
  - coliveira 3y ago
    That is always the case in any platform. Just because something works on a Mac it will not necessarily work on a PC or vice-versa. If a language has multiple compilers, you also need to test in different compilers to make sure your code works there too. You're trying to make this as a C-only issue, when it is a general issue, maybe with different names.
flohofwoe 3y ago
TBF, did you ever run your code with UBSAN enabled? There's a couple of UB cases which don't trigger any bugs until one of the popular C compilers changes some details in their optimizer passes, and which then only manifest with a specific combination of compiler options.
oblio 3y ago
> People who know how to use C rarely if ever have problems with I think we call this "No True Scotsman". In real life lots of people write C because they want to or have to and they generate tons of bugs from bug classes that just aren't present at all in other languages.
DumbStarbucks 3y ago
> People who know how to use C rarely if ever have problems with undefined behavior. I think the CVE database would disagree with that statement.

tejuis 3y ago

Same here, no problems with undefined behavior. Also, no memory issues either after done with code finalization using Valgrind.

kaba0 3y ago
“no memory issues in the tested state space”. That’s the only thing Valgrind can say. But it says nothing how a run with different input would behave, it just might segfault/leak/use after free/UB.
- coliveira 3y ago
  That is always the case in any platform. Just because something works on a Mac it will not necessarily work on a PC or vice-versa. If a language has multiple compilers, you also need to test in different compilers to make sure your code works there too. You're trying to make this as a C-only issue, when it is a general issue, maybe with different names.

flohofwoe 3y ago

TBF, did you ever run your code with UBSAN enabled? There's a couple of UB cases which don't trigger any bugs until one of the popular C compilers changes some details in their optimizer passes, and which then only manifest with a specific combination of compiler options.

oblio 3y ago

> People who know how to use C rarely if ever have problems with I think we call this "No True Scotsman". In real life lots of people write C because they want to or have to and they generate tons of bugs from bug classes that just aren't present at all in other languages.

DumbStarbucks 3y ago

> People who know how to use C rarely if ever have problems with undefined behavior. I think the CVE database would disagree with that statement.