[Python-Dev] Is core dump always a bug? Advice requested (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Tue May 11 00:20:56 EDT 2004

Guido:

> As long as it's possible to attempt to execute arbitrary strings > as bytecode, I'd say ceval should be robust against this.

This ought to be a long-term project then: write a bytecode verifier. It's not a trivial task!

When I wrote that, I was assuming that ceval was already mostly robust in this respect, and that what was being reported was a new hole recently opened up.

But it appears I was gravely mistaken, and that ceval has been full of gaping holes from the beginning.

I'm disappointed to learn this, because I had always regarded it as an axiom that no Python-level code should be capable of crashing the interpreter, and if it can, this represents a bug. However, it seems this axiom has not been adhered to in the design of ceval.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+

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