[Python-3000] MemoryError oddities

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Neal Norwitz <nnorwitz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 10:07 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
>>>> +1 OverflowErrors should probably by reserved for numeric overflows.
>>>
>>> In a sense, passing sys.maxsize as a string size *is* a numeric
>>> overflow - the size can't be represented in the available variable.
>>
>> I'm sure this is the source of the confusion. The problem is that if
>> you specify a small enough value that you *don't* get into
>> unrepresentable sizes, but still very large, you do get a MemoryError.
>> For continuity it would be better to treat both the same, i.e. use
>> MemoryError consistently.
>
> I just checked in a bunch of security patches that do not follow this
> convention.  I wanted to avoid changing the patches we exchanged on
> the security list.  The errors should be changed and made consistent.
> The patches were checked in to 2.4, 2.5, and trunk.  Can someone make
> sure to forward port to 3k?

Let's first forward port these to 3k. In 2.6, I think we should leave
the exceptions as they were. In 3.0 I think it's okay to change such
OverflowErrors into MemoryErrors.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)