> This all looks like an engineering purity spiral. To get philosophical for a second, all of engineering is analyzing problems and synthesizing solutions. Whe

> This all looks like an engineering purity spiral. To get philosophical for a second, all of engineering is analyzing problems and synthesizing solutions. When faced with impossible problems or infinite solution space, we must constrain the problem domain and search space to find solutions that are physically and economically realizable. That's why the answer to every one of your questions is, "it depends." But at the top, yes, it's unreasonable. The C standard specifies the observable behavior of software in C. It does not (and cannot) specify the observable behavior of the hardware that evaluates that software. Since these behavior are architecture and application specific, it falls to other tools for the engineer to find solutions. Simply put, it isn't the job of the C standard to solve these problems. C is not a specification of how a digital circuit evaluates object code. It is a specification of how a higher level language translates into that object code.