[Someone1234]

I'd take it as a complement.

Calling something a "disgusting hack," isn't inherently insulting, it is just a description of how well self documenting and obvious its workings are, which in this case is not at all. Whereas calling something a "work of art" particularly from Linus is high praise.

And while there is some subjectivity to if something is a "hack" or not, the original author doesn't even seem to contend that too much. They were more interested in pointing out that this method likely works across compilers (since it relies on less undefined behaviour than it might first appear).

In any case, it is a neat trick, that I wouldn't want to run across in a codebase since I'd have to spend too long figuring it out.

[chrisseldo]

I agree with you - I think I would take it as a compliment as well. Also, I take back my original post on what the best comment is in this post. This is better:

"this will break the minds of everybody who ever sees that expression"

[AstralStorm]

It is like Duchamp's Fountain in a way.

Challenges the perception and pushes what is possible.

The trick can be properly documented in a page of text and wrapped in a macro... (D'oh!)

It is probably non-conforming anyway or depends on a choice made by the implementation.