Paul Schlie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > if it has an indeterminate value [...] has no bearing on an rvalue > access to a well defined storage location
You might think so, but that's actually not true in the C standard's terminology. It sounds like you interpret "indeterminate value" to mean what the standard defines as "unspecified value" (3.17.3): "valid value of the relevant type where this International Standard imposes no requirements on which value is chosen in any instance". But "indeterminate value" is defined differently (3.17.2), and any reasoning based on your common-sense understanding of the term, instead of the standard's definition of it, has no relevance to the standard. The standard is not intuitive; it can only be understood by careful reading. The key concept that you seem to be missing is trap representations. See 6.2.6.1p5, also keeping in mind that "lvalue", as used in the standard, probably means something slightly different from what you might expect; see 6.3.2.1p1. paul