Post #2060976

On July 17, 1981, two overhead walkways in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, MO collapsed, killing 114 people and injuring 216. There were a number of engineering failures in the construction of the building, but the proximate cause of the walkway collapse was a later change to the design of the walkways. The change seemed innocuous, and the engineer of record didn't see the problem, but it proved disastrous. This is a post about C compilers and undefined behavior.