[Python-Dev] A cute new way to get an infinite loop

[Tim Peters]

[Marek Baczek Baczyński]
> Doesn't it leak memory when Ctrl+C'd (on Windows at least?)

Not really.  "Leak" is reserved for cases where memory is unaccounted
for.  In this case, the memory is consumed by the ever-growing list:

>>> x = [1]
>>> x.extend(-y for y in x)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <generator expression>
KeyboardInterrupt
>>> len(x)
67090195
>>> x[:10]
[1, -1, 1, -1, 1, -1, 1, -1, 1, -1]
>>>

At that point, doing

>>> del x[:]

reclaimed a few hundred megabytes.