Re: Stack Size?

[Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>]

Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj@kvast.blakulla.net> writes:

> Guile is supposed to be "nice" towards novice users.  Infinite
> recursions is a very common error.  Without a stack check, the
> effect is that the machine freezes due to excessive swapping,
> preventing the novice user from even examining what has happened.

Yeah, though I *was* surprised the first time I had a perfectly good
recursion fall over in guile, one that I believe had been working fine
in another scheme.

I tend to think that if we're going to enforce a stack limit, it
should be fairly high by default.  Otherwise if you write a module
that you know will be likely to use very large stacks for normal
inputs, you've got to either communicate the need to raise the stack
limit to everyone using your module via documentation, or you've got
to raise the limit with a debug-set! call inside the module, and the
latter solution is unworkable when you have two modules that have
different ideas of how high the stack limit needs to be, since the
result becomes dependent on load order.

BTW, how does guile's stack limit apply to guile threads?  Is the
limit per-thread or global?

(A part of me wonders whether or not we're just infringing on ulimit's
 territory here...)

-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org, @linuxdevel.com, and @debian.org
Previously @cs.utexas.edu
GPG=1C58 8B2C FB5E 3F64 EA5C  64AE 78FE E5FE F0CB A0AD


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