Overflow Bugs
Arithmetic overflow is a fairly common cause of software failures. Such overflow bugs may be hard to discover and diagnose because they may manifest themselves only for very large input data sets, which are less likely to be used in validation tests.
For example, an unhandled arithmetic overflow in the engine steering software was the primary cause of the crash of the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 rocket. The software had been considered bug-free since it had been used in many previous flights; but those used smaller rockets which generated smaller accelerations than Ariane 5's.
Read more about this topic: Arithmetic Overflow
Famous quotes containing the words overflow and/or bugs:
“A man’s interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
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as stubborn as insomnia.
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—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)