Integer overflow in power (^) doesn't throw an error or an exception

[joelandman]

1. versioninfo output

julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 1.8.2
Commit 36034abf26 (2022-09-29 15:21 UTC)
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 4800H with Radeon Graphics
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LIBM: libopenlibm
  LLVM: libLLVM-13.0.1 (ORCJIT, znver2)
  Threads: 4 on 16 virtual cores
Environment:
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH = :/opt/rocm/hsa:/opt/rocm/hsa:/opt/rocm/llvm/lib:/opt/rocm/hip/lib:/opt/rocm/lib:/usr/local/cuda-11.7/lib64:/home/joe/local/lib:/home/joe/local/lib64
  JULIA_HOME = /home/joe/local

2. how I installed Julia: Compiled from source

3. minimum working example (a.k.a a reproducer)

julia> 10^18
1000000000000000000

julia> 10^19
-8446744073709551616

Julia should throw an error/exception when an integer overflow occurs. 10^18 is about 1/10th of the maxint for Int64 (2^63-1)

[jakobnissen]

It is not possible to throw errors on overflow, because Julia uses native integer arithmetic. The reasons can be found in the Julia FAQ: https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/faq/#faq-integer-arithmetic

There are also multiple other issues on this, which you can find by searching the issue tracker for "overflow"

[joelandman]

Its been pointed out to me that this is by design.

[KristofferC]

It is not possible to throw errors on overflow, because Julia uses native integer arithmetic

This is not really applicable to the case of integer power, see e.g. #21600