That wrap around is very often even a security vulnerability. The common usage pattern in low level C is: if (attacker_size == 0) return SizeError; c

That wrap around is very often even a security vulnerability. The common usage pattern in low level C is: if (attacker_size == 0) return SizeError; char* string_buffer = malloc(attacker_size+1); // oops, string_buffer could be 0 sized. memcpy(string_buffer, attacker_buffer, attacker_size); This caused huge security issues, 2 separate times. The first time was when attackers started understanding integer overflow attacks. The second time was when codebases switched from 32 to 64 bit. The last one is more tricky. But I have seen code 'ported' (that I think looked) like this: uint64_t attacker_size = ...; if ( attacker_size == 0 || attacker_size == UINT64_MAX) return SizeError; uint32_t string_size = ((uint32_t)attacker_size+1)*2; // Oops, overflow on 32 bit register, string_size = 0; // etc