The other day, I played around with the Fibonacci sequence and overflowed my
int
variables in surprisingly low iterations. Did you know you’ll overflow an integer in **48
** iterations? Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the result of the code you’ll see later in this post.
Enter an integer: 48
Fibonacci sequence for 48:
0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610,987,1597,2584,4181,6765,10946,17711,28657,46368,75025,121393,196418,
317811,514229,832040,1346269,2178309,3524578,5702887,9227465,14930352,24157817,39088169,63245986,102334155,165580
141,267914296,433494437,701408733,1134903170,1836311903,-1323752223
You’ll notice that the last value has looped back to a negative value. Oh no! This is a tell-tale sign that an overflow has occurred.
This post will explore how to keep your applications safe from these overflow issues.