[v. oh-ver-floh; n. oh-ver-floh] 
verb, -flowed, -flown, -flow⋅ing, noun | 1. | to flow or run over, as rivers or water: After the thaw, the river overflows and causes great damage. |
| 2. | to have the contents flowing over or spilling, as an overfull container: Stop pouring or your glass is going to overflow. |
| 3. | to pass from one place or part to another as if flowing from an overfull space: The population overflowed into the adjoining territory. |
| 4. | to be filled or supplied with in great measure: a heart overflowing with gratitude; a region overflowing with orchards and vineyards. |
| 5. | to flow over; flood; inundate: The river overflowed several farms. |
| 6. | to flow over or beyond (the brim, banks, borders, etc.). |
| 7. | to cause to overflow. |
| 8. | to flow over the edge or brim of (a receptacle, container, etc.). |
| 9. | to fill to the point of running over. |
| 10. | an overflowing: the annual overflow of the Nile. |
| 11. | something that flows or runs over: to carry off the overflow from a fountain. |
| 12. | a portion crowded out of an overfilled place: to house the overflow of the museum's collection in another building. |
| 13. | an excess or superabundance: an overflow of applicants for the job. |
| 14. | an outlet or receptacle for excess liquid: The tank is equipped with an overflow. |
| o·ver·flow (ō'vər-flō') v. o·ver·flowed, o·ver·flow·ing, o·ver·flows v. intr.
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overflow programming
The condition that occurs when the result of a calculation is too big to store in the intended format. For example, the result of adding one to 255 cannot be represented as an unsigned, eight-bit integer. In a signed integer representation, overflow can occur when an integer becomes either too positive or too negative.
Overflow can also occur in the exponent of a floating point number representation. The term "underflow" is sometimes used for negative overflow of the exponent.
Ignoring overflow will result in nonsensicle results such as 255 + 1 = 0. At the hardware level, the ALU typically indicates overflow by setting an overflow flag bit which the program can test. Programming languages will typically respond to overflow by raising some kind of signal or other error condition to halt normal execution.
Some languages attempt to avoid overflow by providing (optional) variable length number representation (multiprecission arithmetic) so that the maximum number representable is limited only by the amount of storage available.
(2008-05-30)
vərˈfloʊ