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From: Paul Stoeber <paul.stoeber@stud.tu-ilmenau.de>
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Subject: Re: segfault after changing max-lisp-eval-depth and max-specpdl-size
Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 23:22:38 +0200
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On Tue, May 28, 2002 at 02:23:50PM -0600, Richard Stallman wrote:
> It is not easy for Emacs to recover from a real stack overflow.
> Part of the reason for these variables is so that it won't get one.

That means I'll have to use let/while/setq instead of recursion
in order to "Avoid arbitrary limits", which produces less
enjoyable code.

I hoped the Lisp interpreter would use my available memory to evaluate
expressions as far as possible, until ENOMEM, instead of bothering me
with oddities like `max-lisp-eval-depth' and `max-specpdl-size'.  But
for that it would need a hand-allocated stack instead of the C stack.
You probably don't want to change the implementation that much.

Emacs Lisp seems to serve its purpose as it is.  It's not a functional
programming language, and it doesn't need to be one.  Forget I ever asked.