Re: qflllgram() infinite loop

[Igor Schein <igor@txc.com>]

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 09:33:37AM -0800, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 04:13:24PM +0100, Karim BELABAS wrote:
> > 1) If you want to handle huge problems, allocate enough memory.
> > 2) If you don't know what "enough" is, guess, set \gm 2, and react accordingly.
> > 
> > This is not user-friendly, but it doesn't happily overload the machine as
> > most other systems would.
> 
> Why this fixation with "overloading" hardware?  The usual approach is
> that the programer/user's time and resources are much more valuable
> than those of the computer...
> 
> Puzzled,
> Ilya

On a multiuser system a single user can cause a lot of damage to himself
and the rest of the users by running a process with a huge memory
fingerprint, thus resulting in wastage of the users' time and
resources.  This is just one of scenario, there many in real life.  So
while I also find it angering when after hour of running the command
runs out of stack, one should keep in mind that this is a double-edged
issue and the balance in tradeoffs is the key.  Reliable
pre-estimation of required stack would be the best solution, but maybe 
it's too much to ask in a general case.

Igor