[Python-Dev] Is core dump always a bug? Advice requested

Greg Ewing greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Thu May 13 20:28:28 EDT 2004


Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net>:

> Even more scarily, what SBCL (a Common Lisp implementation) does is
> mprotect() a VM page and the end of the stack and deal with overflow
> in a SIGSEGV handler.

Even that isn't necessarily reliable. What if a C call allocates
such a big stack frame that it jumps right over the protected
page? Eventually it will try to access the protected area, but
other chaos could occur in the meantime.

The only completely safe thing I can think of is to eliminate
C-level recursion altogether, a la Stackless.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,	   | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a	  |
Christchurch, New Zealand	   | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc.  |
greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz	   +--------------------------------------+



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