How to prevent this from happening?

[phil_nospam_schmidt at yahoo.com]

Regarding this expression:  1 << x

I had a bug in my code that made x become Very Large - much larger than
I had intended. This caused Python, and my PC, to lock up tight as a
drum, and it appeared that the Python task (Windows XP) was happily and
rapidly consuming all available virtual memory.

Presumably, Python was trying to create a really really long integer,
just as I had asked it.

Is there a way to put a limit on Python, much like there is a stack
limit, so that this sort of thing can't get out of hand?