Karthikeyan Singaravelan <tir.karthi@gmail.com> added the comment: I tried changing it to REASONABLY_LARGE and could see no test failures. It seems the literal was added as part of a220e67a9ed94d66b81e393a3bb9e6acd10068c1 (23/03/1996) and REASONABLY_LARGE was before that as added part of fcdffeaaa144147f43224a641b668df539ffb6fe (07/08/1995) ➜ cpython git:(master) time ./python -Werror -m unittest -v test.test_binhex test_binhex (test.test_binhex.BinHexTestCase) ... ok test_binhex_error_on_long_filename (test.test_binhex.BinHexTestCase) ... ok ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 2 tests in 0.002s OK ./python -Werror -m unittest -v test.test_binhex 0.23s user 0.03s system 93% cpu 0.279 total ---------- nosy: +xtreak _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <https://bugs.python.org/issue34063> _______________________________________