How to create an infinite loop

Obvious in retrospect, but took me a minute to catch on to what’s going on here:

public void DoStuff(byte maximum)
{
    for(byte i = 1; i <= maximum; i++)
    {
      // whatever
    }
}

This works like a trooper until someone passes in a byte.MaxValue in a unit test and i becomes 0 after reaching maximum and getting incremented again.

3 Comments

by Adam Lear on September 2, 2010 • Permalink

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged "facepalm" moment, C#

Posted by Adam Lear on September 2, 2010

https://annalear.ca/2010/09/02/how-to-create-an-infinite-loop/

3 Comments

Cory Fowler
/ September 2, 2010

Could you imagine finding that as a defect down the road…. Thank God for Unit Tests!

Reply
Joshua Kehn
/ October 7, 2010

Interesting bug, glad it got caught. Looks inconspicuous enough.

Reply
Jduv
/ January 15, 2011

This is where the checked keyword can save your bacon.

Reply