&gt; Problematic, yes, but not the difference between a terminating loop and an endless loop<p>If the loop does significant work and was calibrated for an expectation of 65k iterations, stepping to 2 billion (let alone a few quintillion) is for all intents and purpose endless.<p>&gt; And using INT_MAX or similar for what sounds like a timing loop is a whole other can of bad practice. Then the problem isn&#x27;t that you used the wrong type, it&#x27;s that you used the wrong value.<p>No objection there, doing that is making invalid assumptions, my point is that moving to exact-size integral does <i>fix</i> it.