Dictionary of Business Terms: overflow
overflow
error condition that arises when the result of a calculation is a number too big to be represented on an electronic computer or calculator.
Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms: overflow
overflow
the error condition that arises when the result of a calculation is a number too big to be represented in the available space. For example, adding 65,535 + 1 will cause an overflow on a computer that uses 16- bit unsigned integers, because 216 - 1 = 65,535 is the largest integer representable in that format. (Or,worse, if the computer does not detect overflows, it may simply compute 65,535+1 = 0 without letting you know anything is wrong.) Compare underflow.
