Is it safe to use negative integers with size_t?

Question

I just saw some C++ code like this. It was using a condition to decide whether to walk forward or backward through a std::vector. The compiler doesn\'t complain, b

Answer 1

Is it safe to use negative integers with size_t?

No, it is dangerous. Overflow.

size_t a = -1;
std::cout << a << "\n";

Output:

4294967295 // depends on the system, largest value possible here