signed and unsigned int

[jacob navia]

A signed int can contain up to 2Gig, 2 147 483 648, to be exact.

Since The Mars rovers landed, I have been storing the
photographs in two directories, Spirit and Opportunity. I had
more than 18 000 files in a single directory. Without being
aware of it, I crossed the 2 147 483 648 border last week.

Nothing happens, if you do not attempt to read all files in the directory,
or even worst, copy them to another drive.

Worried by mysterious disk errors, I tried to save my work. When making
the copy however, there was an error when the copy arrived at an image
and could not read it.

Foolish me, I tried to copy the file again.

That was it: the disk started to make a periodic mechanical noise, and
it was GONE ALONG WITH ALL MY DATA IN THE DISK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why?

When a signed integer is increased beyond 2147483648, it becomes NEGATIVE.
This means that the system will issue a NONSENSE movemevent order to the
read heads, destroying the disk instantly.

I was lucky. I had a full backup of the mars data in my linux system. Ahh
Microsoft.
I fired up the linux machine running ext2 file system. I issued the order to
copy
the files, and started doing other things during the copy.

When the amount of data transmitted arrived at approx 2GB, I heared with
horror that
the disk started doing the SAME repeating mechanical noise and my linux
system
WAS GONE, I HAVE LOST several months of work without any means of getting
my data back.

Signed integer can contain up to 2147483648 bytes. Not a single byte more.

I have developed a compile time switch to check for overflows within
lcc-win32 and
posted here a message, several weeks ago. Nobody cared to answer.

SHIT !!!!!!!!!!!

C is a nice language in which to write file systems. But IT WOULD BE BETTER
TO
BE CAREFUL WITH THOSE "int" s OK?

You do not believe me?

Try it. Make several directories with several thousand files of 100-200K
each, until
you get more than 2GB.

But backup your drive first...

jacob

[Keith Thompson]

ja***@jacob.remcomp.fr (jacob navia) writes:

A signed int can contain up to 2Gig, 2 147 483 648, to be exact.

[snip]

Did you mean to post this twice?

Followups redirected to /dev/null; please reply to the original post,
so we don't get two distinct threads.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) ks***@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center <*> <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.

[Neil Kurzman]

jacob navia wrote:

A signed int can contain up to 2Gig, 2 147 483 648, to be exact.

Since The Mars rovers landed, I have been storing the
photographs in two directories, Spirit and Opportunity. I had
more than 18 000 files in a single directory. Without being
aware of it, I crossed the 2 147 483 648 border last week.

Nothing happens, if you do not attempt to read all files in the directory,
or even worst, copy them to another drive.

Worried by mysterious disk errors, I tried to save my work. When making
the copy however, there was an error when the copy arrived at an image
and could not read it.

Foolish me, I tried to copy the file again.

That was it: the disk started to make a periodic mechanical noise, and
it was GONE ALONG WITH ALL MY DATA IN THE DISK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why?

When a signed integer is increased beyond 2147483648, it becomes NEGATIVE.
This means that the system will issue a NONSENSE movemevent order to the
read heads, destroying the disk instantly.

I was lucky. I had a full backup of the mars data in my linux system. Ahh
Microsoft.
I fired up the linux machine running ext2 file system. I issued the order to
copy
the files, and started doing other things during the copy.

When the amount of data transmitted arrived at approx 2GB, I heared with
horror that
the disk started doing the SAME repeating mechanical noise and my linux
system
WAS GONE, I HAVE LOST several months of work without any means of getting
my data back.

Signed integer can contain up to 2147483648 bytes. Not a single byte more.

I have developed a compile time switch to check for overflows within
lcc-win32 and
posted here a message, several weeks ago. Nobody cared to answer.

SHIT !!!!!!!!!!!

C is a nice language in which to write file systems. But IT WOULD BE BETTER
TO
BE CAREFUL WITH THOSE "int" s OK?

You do not believe me?

Try it. Make several directories with several thousand files of 100-200K
each, until
you get more than 2GB.

But backup your drive first...

jacob

1. This is OT
2. an "int" can be 16, 32 or 64 bits. It is the compiler / OS / CPU decision.

3. choice of signed unsigned is the programmers choice.
4. fatal overflows are the programmers fault.