This code didn't throw an exception or exit but runs infinitely why?-CodePudding

I was trying an experiment and I expected this code to throw an exception or print ambiguous value for n and exit but its end up running infinitely. Why it runs infinitely?

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main() {

    int y=5;
    int n=4;

    while(y || n) {
        printf("n = %d y = %d\n",n,y);

        y--;
        n--;
    }

   return 0;
}

CodePudding user response：

The loop runs as along a y OR n are non-zero.

For the loop to terminate, y and n would both have to be zero at the top of the loop, but that never happens because y and n start off not being equal to each other and each of them goes down by one each iteration.

Also note that signed integer overflow/underflow is undefined behavior, so if you run the loop long enough for that to happen, there are no guarantees about what will happen.