Re^2: Integer overflow

my $result = unpack "l", pack "l", 1729080737 + 72 * 14 * 425567;

In this case the arithmetic gives an unsigned 32-bit integer, and all is well...

...though I note it works because pack('l', ...) silently accepts a value outside -0x8000_0000..+0x7FFF_FFFF and packs away the LS 4 bytes of it's machine representation. I haven't found where that is documented... In this case that can be avoided by using pack('L', ...).

I wondered about more general/extreme cases, for example:

my $result = 1729080737 + 72 * 14 * 425567  + 0xFFFF_FFFF ;

print $result, "\n" ;
print $result & 0xFFFF_FFFF, "\n" ;
print unpack('l', pack('l', $result)), "\n" ;
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which works fine on 64 bit integer systems, but on a 32 bit one the result is:

6453019568
4294967295
-1

because Perl happily does the arithmetic in ~54 bits of "integer in floating point form" (assuming IEEE-754 double), but when an integer in integer form is required, gives 0xFFFF_FFFF for anything > 0xFFFF_FFFF (and -0x8000_0000 for anything < -0x8000_0000) even if the operation would happily mask down to 32 bits :-( I don't know of a simple way to persuade Perl to give the LS 32 bits of an integer which may or may not be held as a float.

use integer wrapped around the arithmetic gives the expected result on both 32 and 64 bit systems.

Avoiding pack (in order to avoid giving an out of range argument) is a bit messy, but I believe this works for both 64 and 32 bit systems:

  { my $q   = $result & 0xFFFF_FFFF ;
    $result = $q <= 0x7FFF_FFFF ? $q : -1 - ($q ^ 0xFFFF_FFFF) ;
  } ;
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Re^3: Integer overflow by MishaMoose (Scribe) on Dec 03, 2010 at 15:03 UTC
Well this explains why none of my standard approaches to determining overflow work in Perl. I had discovered that any overflow was capped rather than rolling over but I was pulling my hair our for a while as to 'WHY' until I googled for 'perl integer overflow' and found this thread. Many Thanks !! Misha/Michael - Russian student, grognard, bemused observer of humanity and self professed programmer with delusions of relevance	[reply]
Re^3: Integer overflow by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Apr 24, 2009 at 20:44 UTC
I'm trying to be less obtuse about this kind of thing; finally buckle down and learn applied bit ops and hex math and friends. Do you think you could walk (me) through exactly what's going on in this block? `{ my $q = $result & 0xFFFF_FFFF ; $result = $q <= 0x7FFF_FFFF ? $q : -1 - ($q ^ 0xFFFF_FFFF) ; } ;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Integer overflow by gone2015 (Deacon) on Apr 25, 2009 at 09:41 UTC
OK... `{ my $q = $result & 0xFFFF_FFFF ; $result = $q <= 0x7FFF_FFFF ? $q : -1 - ($q ^ 0xFFFF_FFFF) ; } ;` [download] ...the objective is to take the LS 32 bits of an integer, 32 bit or more, signed or unsigned, and set `$result` to be the signed 32 bit integer value. So: `$result & 0xFFFF_FFFF` extracts the LS 32 bits and returns an unsigned value. if the value is now `<= 0x7FFF_FFFF`, then it's positive, and we're done... ...otherwise we have `0x8000_0000..0xFFFF_FFFF` which we need to map to `-0x8000_0000..-0x0000_0001`. The XOR `$q ^ 0xFFFF_FFFF` gives `0x7FFF_FFFF..0x0000_0000`, so we complete the process by negating that and subtracting 1... or subtracting that from -1. This could also be written `-(($q ^ 0xFFFF_FFFF) + 1)`or `-((~$q + 1) & 0xFFFF_FFFF)`... which are closer to the conventional way of changing the sign -- noting that we want this to work for any size of integer from 32 up. This is assuming 2's complement signed integers. I cannot recall a sign and magnitude machine (for integers). The last 1's complement machine I worked on was a CDC6400 in the 70's. So it's a fairly safe assumption. But, you could always: `unpack('l', pack('L', $result & 0xFFFF_FFFF))`, which ensures a valid argument for `pack('L', ...)` and makes no assumptions about how `unpack('l', ...)` interprets the bits.	[reply] [d/l] [select]