A useful primer to Integer overflows/underflows

From a presentation by a security contractor on campus:

1 bottle of beer on the wall, 1 bottle of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 0 bottles of beer on the wall.

0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall.

Funny! But it shows analogies between software and the physical world are rarely good!

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2006
  Yes, it's a bad analogy. But it's pretty funny. I'm sure there's some kind of beer/underflow pun here, too, but I'm not gonna touch it.
  
  - Drew

• Anonymous
  March 22, 2006
  I bet a beer company would look up to that one...sure would cause a bottleneck. Really would bring up the cache! Ok...korny, but it had to come out of my memory before it crashed.

• Anonymous
  March 31, 2006
  Web Resources
  
  
  
  
  
  [.NET Framework] GotDotNet CodeGallery
  Share, find, download and discuss evolving...

• Anonymous
  March 22, 2007
  Although Michael Howard has some arguments about comparing software stuff with physical world I will

• Anonymous
  October 11, 2008
  PingBack from http://3.blogs.23.nu/ilja/2006/03/antville-11478/