&gt; The problem with this apology for the standard<p>While I agree with most of what you wrote, it sounds like you are blaming the standard.  Seems to me the proper blame is the unreasonableness of the language-lawyering by compiler engineers...which as you point out is a fairly recent phenomenon.<p>I always like to say that my first C compiler was pre-ANSI-C, so by today&#x27;s language-lawyering <i>all</i> behavior was undefined and therefore the compiler could have done <i>anything</i> at all. Yet for some strange reason the code produced was more predictable than today.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.metaobject.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;cc-osmartass.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.metaobject.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;cc-osmartass.html</a>