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

Skip Montanaro skip@mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Tue, 29 Aug 2000 15:17:10 -0500 (CDT) 

Thomas> Nah, as long as you can test how many recursions it would take
Thomas> to run out of stack... But it's still not optimal: we're doing a
Thomas> check at compiletime (or rather, configure-time) on a limit
Thomas> which can change during the course of a single process,
Thomas> nevermind a single installation ;P And I don't really like doing
Thomas> a configure test that's just a program that tries to run out of
Thomas> memory... it might turn out troublesome for systems with decent
Thomas> sized stacks.

Not to mention which you'll get different responses depending on how heavily the system is using VM, right? If you are unlucky enough to build on a memory-rich system then copy the python interpreter over to a memory-starved system (or just run the interpreter while you have Emacs, StarOffice and Netscape running), you may well run out of virtual memory a lot sooner than your configure script thought.

Skip