[Python-Dev] Avoiding error from repr() of recursive dictview

[Ben North]

Hi,

A friend of mine, Ruadhan O'Flanagan, came across a bug which turned out
to be the one noted in [http://bugs.python.org/issue18019], i.e.:

>>> d={}
>>> d[42]=d.viewvalues()
>>> d
<segmentation fault>

This issue has been fixed in hg; the behaviour now is that a
RuntimeError is produced for a recursive dictionary view:

>>> d={}
>>> d[42]=d.viewvalues()
>>> d # (output line-broken:)
{42: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded
  while getting the repr of a list

Before finding this, though, I'd investigated and made a patch which
produces a similar "..." output to a recursive dictionary.  Reworking
against current 2.7, the behaviour would be:

>>> x={}
>>> x[42]=x
>>> x # existing behaviour for dictionaries:
{42: {...}}

>>> d={}
>>> d[42]=d.viewvalues()
>>> d # new behaviour:
{42: dict_values([...])}
>>> d[43]=d.viewitems()
>>> d # (output line-broken:)
{42: dict_values([..., dict_items([(42, ...), (43, ...)])]),
 43: dict_items([(42, dict_values([..., ...])), (43, ...)])}

Attached is the patch, against current 2.7 branch.  If there is interest
in applying this, I will create a proper patch (changelog entry, fix to
Lib/test/test_dictviews.py, etc.).

Thanks,

Ben.
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