Re: The behavior is [sic] undefined

[TimToady]

Well, look, all of these phrases are just euphemisms for what's really going on in the head of the language designer:

This feature should not be considered a feature because I am too stupid or lazy to figure out how it really ought to work, and I reserve the right to change my mind about it in the future, at which point everyone will be required to believe that the mess is all your fault, not mine, for charging in where the language designer fears to tread.

But that's kind of unwieldy and tiresome to type, given how often this language designer is stupid, so whenever you see one of the shorter versions, just substitute the paragraph above. Thank you. :-)

[BrowserUk]

But that's kind of unwieldy and tiresome to type

But you're a programmer. Can't we get the computer to substitute the boiler plate ...

{Where is that number for the patents lawyer ...}

[John M. Dlugosz]

That's the kind of thinking that makes the C++ standard unreadable to most. I started out reading and memorizing^※ the original casually-written Annotated Reference Manual. As things got more formal, a casual word would be replaced with the more formal phrase, everywhere. Then more qualifiers were added, such as "non-cv-qualified" and so on. If you didn't already know what it meant, it's thick goo.

I would envision a spec that used clear and mostly terse terminology. Like Perl itself, make the most common terms short. Rather than a dozen adjectives followed by X, make that whole thing called something, and the less-constrained (rarely used) version be decorated instead.

—John

※: I impressed many, including Stroustrup himself, with my ability to name the chapter and verse where a particular feature was described, so everyone else at the table could turn to it. I was young then.

[BrowserUk]

I guess my irony was lost...I'd just read that IBM is trying to patent short meetings.

[BrowserUk]

That's the kind of thinking that makes the C++ standard unreadable to most.

I just downloaded the latest draft and took a look for the first time since trying to make some sense of it back around '95--which probably means I've looked at it two times more than your average C++ programmer.

And wow; the intervening 15 years haven't exactly clarified things have they.