Everything about Undefined behavior

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

1. Read the overview: Undefined behaviorA 5-minute orientation
2. Skim a recent paper: CsmithEdge: more effective compiler testing by handling undefined behaviour less conservativelyInfluential work since 2022
3. Pick up a classic book: C How to ProgramThe most-reprinted book on the subject
4. Read the landmark paper: Miri: Practical Undefined Behavior Detection for RustCited 15 times
5. Go sideways: Segmentation faultA closely related topic
6. Go sideways: Type punningA closely related topic

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

• Miri: Practical Undefined Behavior Detection for Rust

  Ralf Jung, Benjamin Kimock, Christian Poveda · 2026 · Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages · 15 citations

• Taming undefined behavior in LLVM

  Juneyoung Lee, Yoonseung Kim, Youngju Song · 2017 · ACM SIGPLAN Notices · 13 citations

• A Differential Approach to Undefined Behavior Detection

  Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek · 2015 · ACM Transactions on Computer Systems · 12 citations

• A differential approach to undefined behavior detection

  Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek · 2016 · Communications of the ACM · 9 citations

• Detecting Undefined Behaviors in CUDA C

  Wentao Li, Jianhua Sun, Hao Chen · 2019 · IEEE Access · 5 citations

• Prevention of vulnerabilities arising from optimization of code with Undefined Behavior

  Roman Vyacheslavovich Baev, Leonid Vladlenovich Skvortsov, Evgeny Alekseevich Kudryashov · 2021 · Proceedings of the Institute for System Programming of the RAS · 4 citations

• Preventing Vulnerabilities Caused by Optimization of Code with Undefined Behavior

  R. V. Baev, L. V. Skvortsov, E. A. Kudryashov · 2022 · Programming and Computer Software · 3 citations

• Exploiting Undefined Behavior in C/C++ Programs for Optimization: A Study on the Performance Impact

  Lucian Popescu, Nuno P. Lopes · 2025 · Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages · 2 citations

🆕 Influential since 2022

• CsmithEdge: more effective compiler testing by handling undefined behaviour less conservatively

  Karine Even-Mendoza, Cristian Cadar, Alastair F. Donaldson · 2022 · Empirical Software Engineering · 26 citations

• Program Reconditioning: Avoiding Undefined Behaviour When Finding and Reducing Compiler Bugs

  Bastien Lecoeur, Hasan Mohsin, Alastair F. Donaldson · 2023 · Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages · 14 citations

• Symbolic MRD: Dynamic Memory, Undefined Behaviour, and Extrinsic Choice

  Jay Richards, Daniel Wright, Simon Cooksey · 2025 · Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages · 2 citations

• “What does the brain do?” , or Solving a priori undefined problems based on an autonomous agent behavior in real environment

  Kabardino-Balkarian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Z.V. Nagoev · 2025 · News of the Kabardin-Balkar Scientific Center of RAS · 0 citations

• Access to struct members and undefined behavior of C code

  Gerasimov Volodymyr, Karpenko Nadiia, Skuratovskyi Ihor · 2024 · System technologies · 0 citations

📚 Books worth reading

• C How to ProgramPaul J. Deitel, Harvey M. Deitel · 2007
• 📕The Ultimate Question of Programming, Refactoring, and EverythingAndrey Karpov · 2016

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics

• Segmentation fault In computing, a segmentation fault (often shortened to segfault) or access violation is a failure condition raised by hardware with memory protection,…
• Type punning In computer science, type punning is any programming technique that subverts or circumvents the type system of a programming language in order to achieve…
• Union type In computer science, a union is a value that may have any of multiple representations or formats within the same area of memory, or a variable that may…
• C syntax C syntax is the form that text must have in order to be C programming language code. The language syntax rules are designed to allow for code that is terse…
• Pointer (computer programming) I do consider assignment statements and pointer variables to be among computer science's "most valuable treasures." — Donald Knuth, Structured Programming…
• Null pointer In computing, a null pointer (sometimes shortened to nullptr or null) or null reference is a value indicating that the pointer or reference does not refer…
• Type safety In computer science, type safety is the extent to which a programming language discourages or prevents type errors.[vague] Type-safe languages are sometimes…
• C99 C99 (C9X during its development, formally ISO/IEC 9899:1999) is a past version of the C programming language open standard. It extends the previous version…