Recursive function to convert between number bases fails at certain numbers

Question

I'm trying to a create an algorithm that can convert base 10 numbers into base n numbers, where n is at most 10. However, for some weird reason the following algorithm in C fails at certain critical points for each base. For example, for base 2 and base 3 conversions, all numbers up to and including 1023 and 52,487 work, respectively, but numbers beyond that produce some weird negative result. I can't figure out why this is happening; can anyone help me?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

int returnint;

int baseconvert(int number,int base) {
    if(number == 0 || base == 10) {
        return returnint;
    }
    returnint = (number % base) + (10 * baseconvert(number / base, base));
    return returnint;
}

int main() {
    fprintf(stdout,"%d\n",baseconvert(1023,2));
    fprintf(stdout,"%d\n",baseconvert(52487,3));
}

EDIT:

Here is the printed result of the above print statements, if that's helpful:

1410065408
-2094967296

Answer 1

It appears that the integer value is overflowing. For example, the decimal value 1023 in base two is 1111111111. If it is a 4 byte integer, then it will overflow when trying to "add" one more digit (the max signed integer in this case being 2147483647).

Since it appears your goal is to display a number in a different base, it might make more sense to store the digits in a character array.