One Pager Cheat Sheet

• The 2021 Common Weakness Enumeration highlights 'Integer Overflow or Wraparound' as a serious software flaw, caused by attempting to store a value outside the range of an integer variable, leading to unexpected system behavior or failure; understanding and preventing such runtime errors is crucial for programmers.
• Integer overflow or wraparound happens when a value larger than the maximum capacity of its storage space is stored, often causing unexpected results or errors due to the loss of significant bits; this is typically illustrated in programming languages like Java, where a char variable (16 bits) wraps from 65535 to 0 or a byte variable (8 bits) from 127 to -128, indicating a problem especially prominent with signed vs. unsigned types.
• Integer underflow refers to storing a value too small for the range allowed by its variable, resulting in a wraparound where the value shifts towards a large positive number.
• Integer overflow/underflow can lead to inaccurate mathematical computations, infinite loops, and system crashes, but can be avoided by correctly allocating memory to integer variables or using special data structures like Math.addExact() in Java 8 to detect and handle such instances.
• Integer overflow and underflow, which cause valuable data loss through a process called wraparound, can lead to dangerous software errors; thus, programmers should proactively prevent these runtime errors.