The biggest weakness of C++ (and C) is non-localized behavior of bugs due to undefined behavior. Once you have undefined behavior, you can no longer reason about your program in a logically consistent way. A language like Python or Java has no undefined behavior so for example if you have an integer overflow, you can debug knowing that only data touched by that integer overflow is affected by the bug whereas in C++ your entire program is now potentially meaningless.
Memory write errors (some times induced by UB) in one place of the program can easily propagate and later fail in a very different location of the program, with absolutely zero diagnostics of why your variable suddenly had a value out of possible range.
This is why valgrind, asan and friends exist. They move the error diagnostic to the place where error actually happened.
If your C++ program exhibit undefined behaviour, the compiler is allowed to format your entire hard drive. Or encrypt it and display a "plz pay BTC" message. That's called a vulnerability. Real and meaningful security checks have been removed as "dead code" because of signed integer overflow (which is undefined behaviour by default).
If anything, I would guess the gross misunderstanding sprouted somewhere between the specs and the compiler writers. Originally, UB was mostly about bailing out when the underlying platform couldn't handle this particular case, or explicitly ignoring edge cases to simplify implementations. Now however it's also a performance thing, and if anything is marked as UB then it's fair game for the optimiser — even if it could easily be well defined, like signed integer overflow on 2's complement platforms.
> If your C++ program exhibit undefined behaviour, the compiler is allowed to format your entire hard drive. Or encrypt it and display a "plz pay BTC" message.
No, it isn't. That's a completely made up fabrication. And if you had a compiler that was going to do that, then what the standard says or if there's undefined behavior is obviously not relevant or significant in the slightest.
The majority of the UB optimization complaints are because the compiler couldn't tell that UB was happening. It didn't detect UB and then make an evil laugh and go insane. That's not how this works.
Compilers cannot detect UB and then do things in response within the rules of the standard. Rather, they are allowed to assume UB doesn't happen. That's it, that's all they do. They just behave as though your source has no UB at all. As far as the compiler is concerned, UB doesn't exist and can't happen.
When a compiler can detect that UB is happening it'll issue a warning. It never silently exploits it.
> Real and meaningful security checks have been removed as "dead code" because of signed integer overflow (which is undefined behaviour by default).
Real and meaningful security checks have been removed because the security check happened after the values were already used in specific ways, not because of UB. The values were already specified in the source code to be a particular thing via earlier usage. UB is just the shield for developers who wrote a bug to hide behind to avoid admitting they had a bug.
Use UBSAN next time.
> even if it could easily be well defined, like signed integer overflow on 2's complement platforms.
Signed integer overflow is defined behavior, that's not UB. Also platform specific behavior is something the standard doesn't define - that's why it was UB in the first place.
It is kinda ridiculous it took until C++20 for this change, though
> > UB allows the to format/encrypt your entire hard drive.
> No, it isn't. That's a completely made up fabrication.
Ever heard of viruses exploiting buffer overflows to make arbitrary code execution? One cause of that can be a clever optimisation that noticed that the only way the check fails is when some UB is happening. Since UB "never happens", the check is dead code and can be removed. And if the compiler noticed after it got past error reporting, you may not even get a warning.
You still get the vulnerability, though.
> UB is just the shield for developers who wrote a bug to hide behind to avoid admitting they had a bug.
C is what it is, and we live with it. Still, it would be unreasonable to say that the amount of UB it harbours isn't absolutely ludicrous. It's like asking children to cross a poorly mapped minefield and blame them when they don't notice a subtle cue and blow themselves up.
Also, UBSan is not enough. I ran some of my code unde ASan, MSan, and UBSan, and the TIS interpreter still found a couple things. And I'm talking about pathologically straight-line code where once you test for all input sizes you have 100% code path coverage.
> Signed integer overflow is defined behavior, that's not UB.
The C99 standard explicitly states that left shift is undefined on negative integers, as well as signed integers when the result overflows. I had to get around that one personally by replacing x<<n by x(1<<n) on carry propagation code.
> Also platform specific behavior is something the standard doesn't define - that's why it was UB in the first place.*
One point I was making is, compiler writers didn't get that memo. They treat any UB as fair game for their optimisers. It doesn't matter that signed integer overflow was UB because of portability, it still "never happens".
> C is what it is, and we live with it. Still, it would be unreasonable to say that the amount of UB it harbours isn't absolutely ludicrous.
There's a lot of ludicrous stuff about C and I wouldn't recommend anyone use it for anything. Not when Rust and C++ exist.
But UB really isn't the scary boogie man. There could probably stand to be a `as-is {}` block extension for security checks, but that's really about it.
Granted, C is underpowered and I would like namespaces and generics. But from a safety standpoint nowadays, C++ is just as bad. Not only is is monstrously complex, it still has all the pitfalls of C. C++ may have been "more strongly typed" back in the day, but now compiler warnings made up for that small difference.
Granted, C++ can be noticeably safer if you go RAII pointer fest, but then you're essentially programming in Java with better code generation and a worse garbage collector.
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There's also a reason to still write C today: its ubiquity. Makes it easier to deploy everywhere and to talk to other languages. It's mostly a library thing though, and the price in testing effort and bugs is steep.
Well, I'll check who gets rid of all undefined overflows first. 2's complement is nice and dandy, but if overflow is still undefined that doesn't buy me much.
