Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Sesse__ 721 days ago
Don't worry; a function blocking indefinitely (i.e., there is some point where it stops giving off side effects, and never returns) is also UB. C++ attempts to guarantee a certain amount of forward progress, for now.
2 comments

But a function blocking indefinitely while repeatedly writing to a volatile variable is well-defined. So the compiler cannot remove a function call followed by UB unless it knows that the function won't do that.

In theory, the compiler could know that since `printf` is a well-known standard function. In practice, `printf` might even exit the program via SIGPIPE, so I don't think any compiler will assume that it definitely will return.

/puts shell developer hat on

Not just sigpipe. Getting sigttou is part and parcel of how command line apps share control of the tty.

Be careful: it’s been a while since I used C and I haven’t used much C++, but I think forward progress is only guaranteed by C++, not C.