On PPC it does not produce an exception. Inspection of the assembler reveals, in part: cmpwi cr7,r0,0 beq cr7,L5 lwz r2,60(r30)

On PPC it does not produce an exception. Inspection of the assembler reveals, in part: cmpwi cr7,r0,0 beq cr7,L5 lwz r2,60(r30) lwz r0,56(r30) divw r2,r2,r0 ; ordinary integer divide stw r2,72(r30) ; store the quotient b L7 L5: li r0,0 ; else load 0 stw r0,72(r30) ; store the 0 The following thread has more about the reason PPC does not raise exceptions for these overflows: http://fixunix.com/embedded/341544-divide-zero-does-not-crash.html#post885372 http://fixunix.com/embedded/341544-divide-zero-does-not-cras... But they're only thinking about division by 0, not by -1.