Heroic failures (q = q++)

[Ian Collier]

I have noticed quite a lot of talk recently about things like this...

In article <4210 at ksr.com>, jfw at ksr.com (John F. Woods) wrote:

>Note that because it is *undefined*, the compiler was perfectly at
>liberty to generate
>	q := 666	; special marker for evil constructs
>or
>	JSR _cpu$detonate
>or any other damned thing it liked.

Now I was just wondering, is there any statement in the ANSI standard
which prohibits self-destruction of the CPU or any similar behaviour
which might be physically dangerous or expensive? If not, do you think
such limits would be reasonable to include? I mean, I suppose it might
be quite easy to type:
 q = q--
instead of what you really meant:
 q = q-p
and if your computer were to blow up unexpectedly you might get
rather upset (if you were still alive to be upset, that is).

Oh yes,
       :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)

Ian Collier
Ian.Collier at prg.ox.ac.uk | imc at ecs.ox.ac.uk