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Newer page: version 2 Last edited on Thursday, August 21, 2003 10:33:36 pm by AristotlePagaltzis Revert
Older page: version 1 Last edited on Thursday, August 21, 2003 9:44:10 pm by StuartYeates Revert
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
-[UndefinedSemantics] are semantics that are undefined
+Standardised languages often have "grey areas" - features or (combinations of) conditions for which no behaviour was defined. Any implementation of the standard may react however it sees fit when it encounters such a condition, either because implementors were explicitly granted such freedom by the standardisation committee, but many times simply out of necessity because this condition was overlooked (or no attention paid to)
  
-Standardised languages often have ``grey'' areas which it makes little or no sense to standardise these are said to be areas of [ UndefinedSemantics]. Each implementation may do whatever it wishes when a programmer used a feature or combination of features with [UndefinedSemantics].  
+Examples of UndefinedSemantics include  
  
-native method calls have undefined semantics in [Java], #pragma's are have undefined semantics in the [C]/[C++] family of languages, many features of [HTML] tables have undefined semantics and [perl ] is non-standardised (I think...) and so consists entirely of [ UndefinedSemantics]
+* native method calls in [Java]  
+* #pragma defines in [C]/[C++]  
+* many features of [HTML]  
+  
+'' [Perl ] is amply documented, and pretty much every obvious feature's behaviour is explicitly guaranteed by the documentation. So no, it doesn't "consist entirely of UndefinedSemantics" by a long stretch . --AristotlePagaltzis''