Capturing uncertainty 1

What this C++ uncertainty and output-prediction question tests

This is a medium-difficulty C++ reading-comprehension question that asks you to trace program execution and predict output. It probes whether you understand how language features—particularly those that behave subtly or counterintuitively—affect runtime behaviour.

Questions like this appear in technical interviews because they separate candidates who have merely skimmed language syntax from those who can reason carefully about semantics. You'll need to account for the order of evaluation, scope rules, type conversions, and any non-obvious interactions between operators or standard-library calls. The gap between what code looks like and what it actually does is where these problems live.

• Operator precedence and associativity
• Undefined and implementation-defined behaviour
• Reference and pointer semantics
• Standard-library function behaviour and side effects