Why does 1**2**3**4**5 raise a MemoryError?

[Roy Smith]

In article <51590a2b$0$30000$c3e8da3$5496439d at news.astraweb.com>,
 Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:

> Concrete examples of transitive relations: greater than, equal to, less 
> than and equal to.

Will Python 4 implement "less than and equal to"? :-)

[Warning: topic creep]

Well, they are transitive over certain domains.  Or, perhaps, a better 
way to say it is they are transitive according to their traditional 
mathematical definitions.  But, computer languages don't always follow 
those.

I used to work with a guy who was originally a math major.  He used to 
always complain about things like:

s = "foo" + "bar"

because addition is supposed to be commutative.

But, yeah, I know what you're saying that "transitive" applies to 
relations, not to operators.

Although, of course, in some languages, relations *are* operators.  
There's that pesky math vs. programming language dichotomy again.