[Python-Dev] Memory size overflows

[Guido van Rossum]

I'd like to add that, until we decide on a Really Big Rewrite, the
length of all Python sequences must fit in a signed int.  So relying
on malloc returning NULL isn't really a viable approach: even if you
have, say, 2.5 GB of memory in your box, you still can't create a
string of that size.

I do agree that the distinction between OverflowError and MemoryError
is not worth splitting hairs over.

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