[Python-Dev] Memory size overflows (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Mon, 14 Oct 2002 10:28:49 -0400

I'd like to add that, until we decide on a Really Big Rewrite, the length of all Python sequences must fit in a signed int. So relying on malloc returning NULL isn't really a viable approach: even if you have, say, 2.5 GB of memory in your box, you still can't create a string of that size.

I do agree that the distinction between OverflowError and MemoryError is not worth splitting hairs over.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)