> You'd think the fact that the processor itself will throw an exception if you use those bits would be a red flag of "don't do that" That makes it slightly sa

> You'd think the fact that the processor itself will throw an exception if you use those bits would be a red flag of "don't do that" That makes it slightly safer to use those bits, won’t it? As long as your code asks the OS how many bits the hardware supports, and only use the ones it requires to be zero, if you forget to clear the bits before following a pointer, the worst that can happen is a segfault, not reading ‘random’ memory.