Merged revisions 66457-66459,66465-66468,66483-66485,66487-66491 via svnmerge from

svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/trunk

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  r66457 | antoine.pitrou | 2008-09-13 15:30:30 -0500 (Sat, 13 Sep 2008) | 5 lines

  Issue #3850: Misc/find_recursionlimit.py was broken.

  Reviewed by A.M. Kuchling.
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  r66458 | benjamin.peterson | 2008-09-13 17:54:43 -0500 (Sat, 13 Sep 2008) | 1 line

  fix a name issue; note all doc files should be encoded in utf8
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  r66459 | benjamin.peterson | 2008-09-14 11:02:22 -0500 (Sun, 14 Sep 2008) | 1 line

  clarify that radix for int is not 'guessed'
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  r66465 | skip.montanaro | 2008-09-14 21:03:05 -0500 (Sun, 14 Sep 2008) | 3 lines

  Review usage.  Fix a mistake in the new-style class definition.  Add a
  couple new definitions (CPython and virtual machine).
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  r66466 | skip.montanaro | 2008-09-14 21:19:53 -0500 (Sun, 14 Sep 2008) | 2 lines

  Pick up a few more definitions from the glossary on the wiki.
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  r66467 | benjamin.peterson | 2008-09-14 21:53:23 -0500 (Sun, 14 Sep 2008) | 1 line

  mention that object.__init__ no longer takes arbitrary args and kwargs
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  r66468 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-09-15 08:08:32 -0500 (Mon, 15 Sep 2008) | 1 line

  Rewrite item a bit
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  r66483 | georg.brandl | 2008-09-16 05:17:45 -0500 (Tue, 16 Sep 2008) | 2 lines

  Fix typo.
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  r66484 | benjamin.peterson | 2008-09-16 16:20:28 -0500 (Tue, 16 Sep 2008) | 2 lines

  be less wordy
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  r66485 | georg.brandl | 2008-09-17 03:45:54 -0500 (Wed, 17 Sep 2008) | 2 lines

  #3888: add some deprecated modules in whatsnew.
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  r66487 | skip.montanaro | 2008-09-17 06:50:36 -0500 (Wed, 17 Sep 2008) | 2 lines

  usage
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  r66488 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-09-17 07:57:04 -0500 (Wed, 17 Sep 2008) | 1 line

  Markup fixes
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  r66489 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-09-17 07:58:22 -0500 (Wed, 17 Sep 2008) | 2 lines

  Remove comment about improvement: pystone is about the same, and
  the improvements seem to be difficult to quantify
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  r66490 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-09-17 08:04:53 -0500 (Wed, 17 Sep 2008) | 1 line

  Note sqlite3 version; move item
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  r66491 | benjamin.peterson | 2008-09-17 16:54:56 -0500 (Wed, 17 Sep 2008) | 1 line

  document compileall command flags
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1 files changed, 21 insertions, 8 deletions

diff --git a/Misc/find_recursionlimit.py b/Misc/find_recursionlimit.py
index 295e094..2e202be 100644
--- a/Misc/find_recursionlimit.py
+++ b/Misc/find_recursionlimit.py
@@ -1,22 +1,32 @@
 #! /usr/bin/env python
-"""Find the maximum recursion limit that prevents core dumps
+"""Find the maximum recursion limit that prevents interpreter termination.
 
 This script finds the maximum safe recursion limit on a particular
 platform.  If you need to change the recursion limit on your system,
 this script will tell you a safe upper bound.  To use the new limit,
-call sys.setrecursionlimit.
+call sys.setrecursionlimit().
 
 This module implements several ways to create infinite recursion in
 Python.  Different implementations end up pushing different numbers of
 C stack frames, depending on how many calls through Python's abstract
 C API occur.
 
-After each round of tests, it prints a message
-Limit of NNNN is fine.
+After each round of tests, it prints a message:
+"Limit of NNNN is fine".
 
-It ends when Python causes a segmentation fault because the limit is
-too high.  On platforms like Mac and Windows, it should exit with a
-MemoryError.
+The highest printed value of "NNNN" is therefore the highest potentially
+safe limit for your system (which depends on the OS, architecture, but also
+the compilation flags). Please note that it is practically impossible to
+test all possible recursion paths in the interpreter, so the results of
+this test should not be trusted blindly -- although they give a good hint
+of which values are reasonable.
+
+NOTE: When the C stack space allocated by your system is exceeded due
+to excessive recursion, exact behaviour depends on the platform, although
+the interpreter will always fail in a likely brutal way: either a
+segmentation fault, a MemoryError, or just a silent abort.
+
+NB: A program that does not use __methods__ can set a higher limit.
 """
 
 import sys
@@ -87,7 +97,10 @@ def check_limit(n, test_func_name):
     test_func = globals()[test_func_name]
     try:
         test_func()
-    except RuntimeError:
+    # AttributeError can be raised because of the way e.g. PyDict_GetItem()
+    # silences all exceptions and returns NULL, which is usually interpreted
+    # as "missing attribute".
+    except (RuntimeError, AttributeError):
         pass
     else:
         print("Yikes!")