I2C communication

I do not know much about I2C communication but I have a code which reads data from RTC. In case the rtc did not send the data will I stay in infinite loop? I am sorry I do not have access to source code. I wanted to know how I2C driver is written in general if there is no response from slave.

No one can know how our code works.
I think there should be a time out.
You can unplug the RTC and see if the code times out. (error)