I intend to sound like I'm agreeing with you here, not disagreeing. The standard is what the committee publishes, yeah. For C++ it's https://www.iso.org/standa

I intend to sound like I'm agreeing with you here, not disagreeing. The standard is what the committee publishes, yeah. For C++ it's https://www.iso.org/standard/79358.html https://www.iso.org/standard/79358.html ; I didn't look up the corresponding C one, but I have a friend (hi, Kate!) who maintains a C compiler who's pretty comfortable with the latest standard. The standard is the official documentation. There's drawbacks having whitepaper standards that cost money, but this is what those languages have. For what it's worth, it used to bug me that part of the standard is that there's intentionally undefined behaviour, but I went to BoostCon and heard some of the standard body talk and they impressed me as being thoughtful about leaving areas for implementers to innovate specific optimisations, so as not to restrict the potential of the community. If I'm reading you right we agree that there's a difference between the standard and the implementation that's practical and real, but I'm not certain there's much to be done about that.