What do you do in the real world?

Tim writes:

I believe your question was: "This still leaves some unanswered
questions, though. If you are given a heading without a fix, and the
heading does not intercept your flight plan or any approach or any
expected routing, where do you go? In VMC you are clearly expected to
go VFR and land. In IMC, what do you do?"

Right. What's the answer?

If you don't know the regulation and the controller makes a mistake
(they do) and does not give you the fix/reason you are being vectored,
then it is ambiguous. You always need to know why you are being
vectored and what you are being vectored to. So if you get vectors and
are not told anything else other than you are being vectored you need to
ask them why/where to, etc. They are required to give that information
to you.

Maybe, but it's extraordinarily common to just hear "turn left heading 045"
without any further explanation, particularly during an approach.

What do you do then?

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