Iterating until int.MaxValue reached

Question

As a little test I wanted to see how long it would take to count to int.MaxValue in a C# console application. Every few hours I checked the progress. Last night when I thoug

Answer 1

Your for loop:

for (int counter=0; counter <=numToCountTo ; counter++)

is incorrect. It will execute while counter <= int.MaxValue which is ALWAYS true. When it increments it it will roll to int.MinValue and keep incrementing.

Change it to

for (int counter=0; counter < numToCountTo ; counter++)

or use a long for your loop counter:

for (long counter=0; counter <= numToCountTo ; counter++)

You can also use a do...while loop since the loop is executed before the breaking condition is evaluated:

int counter = 0;
do
{
   ...
   counter++;
}
while(counter < numToCountTo);