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Depressing and faintly terrifying days for the C standard [pdf]
Chris Lattner, the architect of the Clang/LLVM C compiler explained the effects of the C standard’s “undefined behavior”(UB):
Victor Yodaiken
Draft standards C89 The ANSI standard. C23 the most recent draft. Notes and quotes on C standard. Three modest proposals for fixing the C standard.
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Undefined behavior in C is a reading error
Considering how important “undefined behavior” has become to C semantics and the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14 Committee, the lack of any reference to it in the K&R ANSI book is notable and the description in the 1999 C Rationale was quite modest.
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Linus Torvalds on aliasing
See also Dennis Ritchie on aliasing, PLOS article , pointer alias in C and remarks on the purpose of C.
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Von Neumann’s critique of automata theory and logic in computer science (1947)
These remarks from “THE GENERAL AND LOGICAL THEORY OF AUTOMATA” 1947 are enormously insightful – no surprise. Von Neumann essentially predicts the emergence of the field of analysis of algorithms and algorithmic complexity. Not only does he point out the importance of understanding how many steps it will take to carry…