Consider, for example, an implementation defined function f() -- which can also diverge/crash horribly, etc.
If I write
if p {
print("p is true")
} else {
g()
}
if p {
f()
}
Then either we:
- print p is true and execute f
- do nothingThis is true regardless of if f immediately crashes the computer, nasal demons, whatever -- that's implementation defined.
UB means f may never happen.
And that means the compiler may optimize this to just:
g()
Notice the difference here -- the print never happens!, and g always happens.You can see why this is concerning when you write code like
if dry_run {
print("would run rm -rf /")
} else {
run("rm -rf /")
}
if dry_run {
// oops: some_debug_string is NULL and will segfault!
print(some_debug_string);
}