UB

Abbreviation with 2 meanings

UB
Stands forUniversity at Buffalo
Meanings2
CategoriesEducation & Academia, Technology & Computing

UB has two meanings. It stands for University at Buffalo (university) or Undefined behavior (programming).

Meanings of UB at a glance

#UB stands forContext
1University at BuffaloEducation & Academia › University
2Undefined behaviorTechnology & Computing › Programming

1. University at Buffalo

Education & Academia · University Abbreviations

Largest campus in the State University of New York system, founded in 1846 as a private medical school with future US president Millard Fillmore as its first chancellor. It became part of SUNY in 1962 and is one of its four university centers.

Example: UB's engineering school has strong ties to western New York's manufacturing companies.

Its official name is "University at Buffalo, The State University of New York". The Bulls compete in the Mid-American Conference. UB also abbreviates the University of Baltimore, the University of Botswana and other institutions.

2. Undefined behavior

Technology & Computing · Programming Abbreviations

In C and C++, code whose result the language standard does not define, such as reading past an array's end, using freed memory or overflowing a signed integer. The compiler may then do anything, including removing safety checks.

Example: That signed overflow is UB, so the optimizer removed the bounds check entirely.

Compilers exploit undefined behavior to optimize aggressively, which can turn subtle bugs into security holes. Tools such as UBSan (UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer) detect some cases at runtime, and Rust confines undefined behavior to code marked unsafe. An old joke says UB can make demons fly out of your nose, hence the slang "nasal demons".

More university abbreviations

  • TUM – Technical University of Munich (Technische Universität München)
  • U of T – University of Toronto
  • UA – University of Alabama
  • UAB – University of Alabama at Birmingham
  • UBC – University of British Columbia
  • UC – University of California
  • UCB – University of California, Berkeley
  • UCD – University of California, Davis

See all 135 university abbreviations →

More programming abbreviations

  • TDD – Test-driven development
  • TOML – Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language
  • TS – TypeScript
  • UAT – User acceptance testing
  • UID – User identifier
  • UML – Unified Modeling Language
  • UTF-8 – Unicode Transformation Format, 8-bit
  • UUID – Universally unique identifier

See all 154 programming abbreviations →