[Python-Dev] stack check on Unix: any suggestions? (original) (raw)

Charles G Waldman cgw@fnal.gov
Thu, 31 Aug 2000 09:50:01 -0500 (CDT)

Jack Jansen writes:

I'm confused now: how is this counting-stack-limit different from the maximum recursion depth we already have?

Because on Unix the maximum allowable stack space is not fixed (it can be controlled by "ulimit" or "setrlimit"), so a hard-coded maximum recursion depth is not appropriate.

The whole point of PyOS_StackCheck is to do an actual check of whether before we hit the hard limit.

If computing it is too difficult because getrlimit isn't available or doesn't do what we want we should probe it

getrlimit is available and works fine. It's getrusage that is problematic.

I seriously think that instead of trying to slip this in `under the wire' we should defer for 2.0b1 and try to do it right for either the next 2.0x. Getting this stuff right on Unix, portably, is tricky. There may be a lot of different tricks required to make this work right on different flavors of Unix.