Pathological regular expression

[Aaron Brady]

On Apr 11, 7:31 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
_
> My original test has now been running for close to ten hours now, and
> still can't be interrupted with ctrl-C. However that's in Python 2.5,
> having tried it in Python 2.6.2 they can be interrupted, so I'm satisfied
> that this bug of "regex hangs the interpreter" is not worth reporting, as
> it effects only older versions.
>
> [...]
>
> > 3. Test the RE, get it correct
>
> They're not my regexes. I don't care whether they are correct or not, I'm
> more concerned about them locking up the interpreter.
>
> --
> Steven

I don't believe in second consoles or kill(1)... or telnet.  I wonder
if the hanging is symptomatic of a wider-spread bug, that shorter
operations would never reveal. ...