[New-bugs-announce] [issue40315] Incorrect stacksize in code object

[Skip Montanaro]

New submission from Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com>:

Consider this trivial function:

>>> def f():
...   while True:
...     pass
...

and its disassembly:

>>> dis.dis(f)
  3     >>    0 JUMP_ABSOLUTE               0
              2 LOAD_CONST                  0 (None)
              4 RETURN_VALUE

Despite its infinite-loop-ness, the generated LOAD_CONST/RETURN_VALUE pair suggests the code object's stacksize should be 1, but it's 0:

>>> print(f.__code__.co_stacksize)
0

I understand that the compiler might have decided the code was unreachable and the LOAD_CONST instruction would never be reached, but if that was the case, why would that instruction pair be generated?

This is only of interest because my register virtual machine translator trusts that the co_nlocals and co_stacksize attributes of the code object reflect the actual space allocation in the frame object. I can use

max(1, f.__code__.co_stacksize + f.__code__.co_nlocals)

as the allocated locals+stack space. (That first slot in the frame object will always be available.) That makes this example translate, but doesn't guarantee there's not a bug in determination of the stack size which could pop up again later.

----------
components: Interpreter Core
messages: 366692
nosy: skip.montanaro
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Incorrect stacksize in code object
type: compile error
versions: Python 3.9

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue40315>
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