Oy...this is what happens when you don't test. The doc says "int(...)" can handle any data type but it doesn't handle 'char *' (at least not the way I'd expect it to). Looks like it's just using the pointer value. I was assuming that int(...) would basically call atoi().
So yeah, just ignore what I wrote. Except for the overflow part--I think I was right about the possibility of overflow. 