Does “Undefined Behavior” really permit *anything* to happen? [duplicate]

Answer 1

The definition of undefined behaviour, in every C and C++ standard, is essentially that the standard imposes no requirements on what happens.

Yes, that means any outcome is permitted. But there are no particular outcomes that are required to happen, nor any outcomes that are required to NOT happen. It does not matter if you have a compiler and library that consistently yields a particular behaviour in response to a particular instance of undefined behaviour - such a behaviour is not required, and may change even in a future bugfix release of your compiler - and the compiler will still be perfectly correct according to each version of the C and C++ standards.

If your host system has hardware support in the form of connection to probes that are inserted in your nostrils, it is within the realms of possibility that an occurrence of undefined behaviour will cause undesired nasal effects.