Common undefined behaviours in C++ programming


The following are most common causes of undefined behaviour in C++ programming. Note that all of these are specified in the standard to lead to undefined behaviour and should be avaoided at all costs when writing programs.

  •  Signed integer overflow
  • Dereferencing a NULL pointer, a pointer returned by a "new" allocation of size zero, pointer that has not yet been definitely initialized, pointer at a location beyond the end of an array.
  •  Using pointers to objects which have gone out of scope or have been deleted
  •  Performing pointer arithmetic that yields a result outside the boundaries of an array.
  • Converting pointers to objects of incompatible types
  •  Reading or writing to an object or array at an offset that is negative
  •  Making virtual function calls to pure virtual functions of an object from its constructor or destructor
  •  Not returning a value from a value-returning function

Updated on: 12-Feb-2020

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