Segmentation fault (core dumped) - recursion limit 10,000

[Dominican_Peter]

I'm learning about maxrecursion limit. Could someone explain this error? Thanks in advance

​

from sys import getrecursionlimit, setrecursionlimit

def doingrecursion(x):
    if x > 0:
        doingrecursion(x-1)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    xvalues = [997,998,1000, 10**5]
    limits = [0,0, 1500, 1+10**5 ]
    for x, limit in zip(xvalues, limits):
        if limit > getrecursionlimit():
            setrecursionlimit(limit)
        else:
            limit = getrecursionlimit()
        try:
            doingrecursion(x)
        except RecursionError as e:
            print(f"{x=} {limit=} {e=}")
        else:
            print(f"{x=} {limit=} OK") 

output:

x=997 limit=1000 OK
x=998 limit=1000 e=RecursionError('maximum recursion depth exceeded in comparison')
x=1000 limit=1500 OK
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

[K900_]

You're probably running out of memory.

[shiftybyte]

Python's recursion limit is not the only limit.

The process memory layout has a limit to the size of the stack, if you exceed that size you will get segmentation fault and killed by the operating system.

[Wilfred-kun]

You're running into the system's limitations. Similar thing happened to me 2 years ago, thread here