C++26: Reducing undefined behaviour

This article discusses the changes in C++26 aimed at reducing undefined behavior in the language. It highlights the implications of these changes for developers and the overall safety of C++ programming.

From the article

Nowadays, safety is in the focus of C++. Whether it’s at committee meetings, conference talks, or hallway discussions, the topic keeps coming up. C++26 made some big steps forward in this area, and one recurring theme is the reduction of cases leading to undefined behaviour.

With the words of one of the presented proposals, “undefined behaviour has all but unbounded potential for bad program behaviour, including security leaks, data corruption, deadlocks, and so on” . The simple act of violating a precondition can silently turn a perfectly correct-looking program into one that exhibits any of these.

In today’s article, we look at how and where C++26 addresses this. A couple of these changes we have already covered on this blog, but they are worth reiterating in this context. And there…

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