How does one trap arithmetic overflow errors in Swift?

Question

This one is probably easy. We know that the operator &+ does modular arithmetic on integers (wraps around), while the operator + causes an error.

$ swift
  1> var x: Int8 = 100
x: Int8 = 100
  2> x &+ x
$R0: Int8 = -56
  3> x + x
Execution interrupted. Enter Swift code to recover and continue.

What kind of error is this? I can't catch it and I can't turn it in to an optional:

  4> do {try x + x} catch {print("got it")}
Execution interrupted. Enter Swift code to recover and continue.
  5> try? x + x
Execution interrupted. Enter Swift code to recover and continue.

I'm pretty sure this kind of error is the same kind of error from this Stack Overflow question (a divide-by-zero) but I don't know if this kind of error can be trapped. What simple thing am I missing? Can it be trapped or not? If so, how?

Answer 1

Distinguish between an exception and a runtime error. An exception is thrown and can be caught. A runtime error stops your program dead in its tracks. Adding and getting an overflow is a runtime error, plain and simple. There is nothing to catch.

The point of an operator like &+ is that it doesn't error and it doesn't tell you there was a problem. That is the whole point.

If you think you might overflow, and you want to know whether you did, use static methods like addWithOverflow. It returns a tuple consisting of the result and a Bool stating whether there was an overflow.

var x: Int8 = 100
let result = x &+ x // -56

x = 100
let result2 = Int8.addWithOverflow(x,x) // (-56, true)

Answer 2

Looks like this has become a non-static method in Swift 5, addingReportingOverflow(_:).

So for example,

UInt8.max.addingReportingOverflow(1)

will return (partialValue: 0, overflow: true) See more on the Int manual page

And of course the normal arithmetic operators that start with & to allow overflow without returning overflow reports,

UInt8.max &+ 1

would return 0 as a UInt8