[ python-Bugs-1202533 ] a bunch of infinite C recursions

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Bugs item #1202533, was opened at 2005-05-15 23:43
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by arigo
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Category: Python Interpreter Core
Group: None
Status: Open
>Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Armin Rigo (arigo)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: a bunch of infinite C recursions

Initial Comment:
There is a general way to cause unchecked infinite recursion at the C level, and I have no clue at the moment how it could be reasonably fixed.  The idea is to define special __xxx__ methods in such a way that no Python code is actually called before they invoke more special methods (e.g. themselves).

>>> class A: pass
>>> A.__mul__=new.instancemethod(operator.mul,None,A)
>>> A()*2
Segmentation fault

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>Comment By: Armin Rigo (arigo)
Date: 2005-05-19 15:05

Message:
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This is not about the new module.  The same example can be written as:

  import types
  class A: pass
  A.__mul__ = types.MethodType(operator.mul, None, A)

If this still looks essentially like an indirect way of using the new module, here is another example:

  class A(str): __get__ = getattr
  a = A('a')
  A.a = a
  a.a

Or, as I just found out, new-style classes are again vulnerable to the older example based __call__, which was fixed for old-style classes:

  class A(object): pass
  A.__call__ = A()
  A()()

I'm not denying that these examples look convoluted :-)
My point here is that we can basically build a lot of examples based only on core (if not necessarily widely understood) language features.  It appears to go against the basic hope that CPython cannot be crashed as long as you don't use features explicitely marked as dangerous.

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Comment By: Terry J. Reedy (tjreedy)
Date: 2005-05-19 02:02

Message:
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On Windows, this caused the interactive window to just 
disappear.so I suspect something similar occurred.

New is a known dangerous, use at your own risk, implementation 
specific module whose use, like byte code hacking, is outside 
the language proper.  Both bypass normal object creation syntax 
and its checks and both can create invalid objects.  A hold-your-
hand inplementation would not give such access to internals.

Lib Ref 3.28 says "This module provides a low-level interface to 
the interpreter, so care must be exercised when using this 
module. It is possible to supply non-sensical arguments which 
crash the interpreter when the object is used."  Should more or 
different be said?  

If not, I suspect this should be closed as 'won't fix', as in 'won't 
remove the inherently dangerous new module'.




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