In section 2.2, the author claims that the intent of a programmer is knowable when the programmer writes something that could result in undefined behavior, but this claim does not hold up for the example given. When a program attempts to read from beyond the end of an array, it is rarely something that a programmer intended to happen, and it is rarely the case that any action the program takes as a response to that event (even if it is a segmentation or general protection fault) is in conformance with what the programmer intended to happen after the sequence of inputs that led up to this event. It is much more likely that the programmer did not even think that this could happen, and expected that the program would continue to run and produce results conforming to the purpose they intended the program to serve.
If I can divine what the author of this article actually intended to say, I think it is that, in at least some cases of undefined behavior, programmers commonly have intuitions about what would happen if that behavior occurred during the execution of their programs. I don't know if the rest of the thesis can be salvaged by substituting that reading.
If I can divine what the author of this article actually intended to say, I think it is that, in at least some cases of undefined behavior, programmers commonly have intuitions about what would happen if that behavior occurred during the execution of their programs. I don't know if the rest of the thesis can be salvaged by substituting that reading.