Java's making fun of me again

Previously, during my monthly meeting with supervisors, I shared results for my different implementations of multilevel drawing algorithms (regular readers may recall an issue I had with one whereby the global position was ignored), and found what was assumed to be a mistake on my behalf in the timings it took to run the independent algorithms.

In what I will now call Algorithm A, 3elt took too long to run and so I ended it prematurely, giving the following:

   Graph          Time (ms)

3elt.graph    ||   2147483647

In Algorithm B, I had a similar problem with finan512, which I also ended prematurely:

      Graph             Time (ms)

finan512.graph       2147483647

At first I did not notice this, probably because I was just happy to get results, but it was highlighted in the monthly meeting wherein I explained that they were the results Java gave. Eventually I just assumed I had accidentally copied the same result over, as it seemed unlikely Java would give the same result twice.

Today however, during a break from my reading/writing, I ran my application again to see if I would ever get an output from finan512 (by leaving it for however long). Eventually I stopped it whilst it was placing the 6th level of the graph (of 26 levels), and noticed something that looked familiar, the output : 2147483647.

It turns out I was mistaken, I had assumed this number to be the runtime in milliseconds as it was the last item to be printed out. In fact, this is the Java Result (a number separate from my application) and coincidently the biggest value of an integer in Java (32bit).

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_2147483647_the_biggest_number_Java_can_handle

An embarrassing mistake but better to identify it now than for someone to question it at a later date. It should be noted; normally, when an application is stopped, NetBeans outputs; "BUILD STOPPED (total time: n seconds)" which may further explain my confusion. Funny old world.