Infinite recursion from lack of a cast

PIEBALDconsult

Here's a little bit of potential infinite recursion I wrote just half an hour ago. (I did catch it before I tried to run it, but it was a near thing.) Boiled down, I had a method that used a long but which wasn't supposed to accept negative values so I decided I wanted it to use a ulong instead, for example:

public ulong Method ( ulong i )
{
ulong result = outcome of doing something worthwhile with i

return ( result ) ;
}

Then I decided I might want to support longs anyway, for backward compatibility, but treat negatives as 0:

public ulong Method ( long i )
{
ulong result ;

if ( i >= 0 ) 
{
    result = Method ( i ) ;
}
else
{
    result = Method ( 0 ) ;
}

return ( result ) ;
}

I compiled it and was looking at it when it suddenly occured to me, "I guess I'd better cast those longs to ulongs" before calling Method.

public ulong Method ( long i )
{
ulong result ;

if ( i >= 0 ) 
{
    result = Method ( **(ulong)** i ) ;
}
else
{
    result = Method ( **(ulong)** 0 ) ;
}

return ( result ) ;
}

Paul Conrad

Is there more to your recursive function? I keep getting stack overflow. It never reaches the base case :)

Some people have a memory and an attention span, you should try them out one day. - Jeremy Falcon

PIEBALDconsult

Exactly. It's not supposed to be recursive.

Paul Conrad

It is just a real screwy subtle bug :-D --modified However, C++.NET does not compile the equivalent code unless you cast the parameter. It complains of making an ambiguous call.

Last modified: 12mins after originally posted --

If you try to write that in English, I might be able to understand more than a fraction of it. - Guffa

unimatrics

Is this a joke?

Ryan Binns

unimatrics wrote:

Is this a joke?

Your reply? Yes.

Ryan

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