3 ms·

> In the code above, is there any sense in which INT_MIN is the "right" answer for any typical problem domain? There is no answer different that INT_MIN that w

> In the code above, is there any sense in which INT_MIN is the "right" answer for any typical problem domain? There is no answer different that INT_MIN that would be right and make sense, i.e. the natural properties of the + operator (associativity, commutativity) are respected. Thus, by want of another possibility, INT_MIN is precisely the right answer to your code. I read your code and it seems to me very clear that INT_MIN is exactly what the programmer intended.

_kst_ 7y ago
> I read your code and it seems to me very clear that INT_MIN is exactly what the programmer intended. Well, I'm the author and that's not what I intended. I used INT_MAX as the initial value because it was a simple example. Imagine a case where the value happens to be equal to INT_MAX, and then you add 1 to it. The fact that no result other than INT_MIN makes sense doesn't imply that INT_MIN does make sense. Saturation (having INT_MAX + 1 yield INT_MAX) or reporting an error seem equally sensible. We don't know which behavior is "correct" without knowing anything about the problem domain and what the program is supposed to do. A likely scenario is that the programmer didn't intend the computation to overflow at all, but the program encountered input that the programmer hadn't anticipated. INT_MAX + 1 commonly yields INT_MIN because typical hardware happens to work that way. It's not particularly meaningful in mathematical terms. As for "natural properties", it violates "n + 1 > n". C integers are not, and cannot be, mathematical integers (unless you can restrict values to the range they support).