bogus OverflowError: python bug?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Luke wrote:
> I'm getting an OverflowError which doesn't make sense to me.  Is this a
> python bug?

I very much doubt this. More likely, it's an omniORB bug.

> Surely that line of source code shouldn't be able to produce an 
> OverflowError?

It actually might. If the internal memory of the interpreter got
corrupted by a buggy extension module, any code may cause any exception.

> (BTW, I know that a traceback can sometimes print the wrong source line 
> when
> the .py file has been modified since importing the module into the python
> process, but I was careful to avoid this problem).

There are other possible causes for bogus exceptions. A common one is 
that Python set an exception at some point, but the extension module
forgot to forward the exception. Then, the next time Python checks
for exceptions, it sees that there still is an exception pending, and
raises it. That exception will make no sense that that point, of course.

Only a gdb session can tell what really happened.

Regards,
Martin