Off-by-one error

An off-by-one error (OBOE), also commonly known as an OBOB (off-by-one bug), is a logic error involving the discrete equivalent of a boundary condition. It often occurs in computer programming when an iterative loop iterates one time too many or too few. This problem could arise when a programmer makes mistakes such as using "is less than or equal to" where "is less than" should have been used in a comparison or fails to take into account that a sequence starts at zero rather than one (as with array indices in many languages). This can also occur in a mathematical context.

Looping over arrays

Consider an array of items, and items m through n (inclusive) are to be processed. How many items are there? An intuitive answer may be n − m, but that is off by one, exhibiting a fencepost error; the correct answer is n –m + 1.

For this reason, ranges in computing are often represented by half-open intervals; the range from m to n (inclusive) is represented by the range from m (inclusive) to n + 1 (exclusive) to avoid fencepost errors. For example, a loop that iterates five times (from 0 to 4 inclusive) can be written as a half-open interval from 0 to 5: