Why does integer division by zero result in a floating point exception?

Question

Division by zero in a C program results in abnormal termination with the error message Floating point exception (core dumped). This is unsurprising for floating point division, but why does it say this when integer division by zero occurs? Does integer division actually use the FPU under the hood?

(This is all on Linux under x86, by the way.)

Answer 1

There could be many different implementation-specific reasons for that.

For example, the FPU unit on x86 platform supports both floating point and integer formats for reading arguments and writing results. Back when the platform itself was 16-bit, some compilers used the FPU to perform division with 32-bit integer operands (since there's no precision loss for 32-bit wide data). Under such circumstances there would be nothing unusual in getting a genuine FPU error for invalid 32-bit integer division.

Answer 2

My guess at a historical explanation for this would be that the original unix hardware didn't generate a trap on integer division by zero, so the name SIGFPE made sense. (PDP assembly programmers, confirm?) Then later when the system was ported (or in the case of Linux, reimplemented) to hardware with an integer division-by-zero trap, it was not considered worthwhile to add a new signal number, so the old one acquired a new meaning and now has a slightly confusing name.

Answer 3

Does integer division actually use the FPU under the hood?

No, Linux just generates SIGFPE in this case too (it's a legacy name whose usage has now been extended). Indeed, the Single Unix Specification defines SIGFPE as "Erroneous arithmetic operation".

Answer 4

man signal mentions:

Integer division by zero has undefined result. On some architectures it will generate a SIGFPE signal. (Also dividing the most negative integer by -1 may generate SIGFPE.)