Why did the loop terminate so early?

When I ran the following loop:

for i = 1 : 5^15
   %
end
i

Matlab(R2007b) terminated when i equals 2^31-1 (2147483647). That's way too early. Do anyone have an explanation?

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

That is of course a quite ancient version. In MATLAB 2015a, the loop continues all the way to 5^15.

2^31-1 is the maximum representable integer in a 32-bit version of MATLAB, which yours is. I don't know the specifics, but it is presumably related to that.

What class of variable is i? I actually would have expected it to be a double, and therefore you would not have this problem.

[YEN]

The variable i is actually a "double" so it should not be limited to 2^31-1. So strange. Thanks anyway.