What is Overflow Error in Software Programming

What is Overflow Error in Software Programming

There are two types of overflow errors; 1-one has to do with the internal memory stack of the program, 2-other has to do with the amount of memory used to store data.

Each program has a section of memory allocated for a stack. The stack is used to store internal data for the program and is very fast and keep track of return addressing. In other words, a program may jump to an area that reads some data from the hard drive, then it returns from that routine to continue processing the data. The stack keeps track of the originating address, and the program uses that for the return. Kind of like leaving breadcrumbs to find your way back. That being said, the stack has a limited amount of storage space. Between using it for storing return addresses, and as well as memory usage for storing variables, it can run out and all the little bits of data overflow and cause programs to crash.

Also Read : What is an ERROR and its Types !

The stack overflow problem is not as prevalent on the newer operating systems, however, because of the small footprint on mobile devices it can become challenging. If your operating system on your mobile device is giving you a stack overflow error, you may have too many apps running. You may have a virus using stack space. You could even have hardware damage that could cause a stack overflow error message. Check your app usage and virus protection and run a memory diagnostic app on your mobile device to see if this helps clear up your error.

Example: 8-bit overflow

An example of an 8-bit overflow occurs in the binary sum 11111111 + 1 (denary: 255 + 1).

In binary, 11111111+00000001=100000000 but the leftmost 1 is an overflow number
The total is a number bigger than 8 digits, and when this happens the CPU drops the overflow digit because the computer cannot store it anywhere, and the computer thinks 255 + 1 = 0.

Overflow errors happen when the largest number that a register can hold is exceeded. The number of bits that it can handle is called the word size.

Most CPUs use a much bigger word size than 8 bits. Many PCs have a 64-bit CPU.

Here is an SQL query to prove this points:

DECLARE @sample NUMERIC(5,2)
SET @sample = 1000.554
SELECT @sample

Output
Arithmetic overflow error converting numeric to data type numeric.