maximum length of a list & tuple

[Lupe]

hi,

I'm finishing a small program which uses recursion for less than 100 levels.

Each time the function is called, it compares an element of a list (which is
a list too) to other elements, which all amounts to millions of
comparisons.

The program is working for short lists but not for longer ones.  I think
there are two possible problems:  either disk space is not enough to save
lists as the program is executed or there is a finite manageable list
lenght that is reached by the program.

hence my question:

is there a limit? which one? I'm using list.append()
what about for tuples?

I'll rewrite that part of the code and will overcome the problem, since I
only need a few elements of the list generated, but I'm still curious about
the answers

Thanks in advanve

Lupe