[issue45044] Agreeing on error raised by large repeat value for sequences

[Raymond Hettinger]

Raymond Hettinger <raymond.hettinger at gmail.com> added the comment:

These should be left as they are because they indicate different problems and solutions.

The Overflow errors are dependent on PY_SSIZE_T_MAX.  They indicate the that size is to big to store in a variable.  Changing from a 32-bit build to a 64-bit build can alleviate this problem even on a system with the same amount of memory.

The MemoryErrors are dependent on the size of memory.  They indicate that a malloc() or realloc() failed.  This problem can be solved by adding memory.

FWIW, this isn't just limited to sequence types.  Throughout the implementation, failed memory allocations raise a MemoryError and know variable size overflows raise an OverflowError (for example, int and float objects).

It would have been nice if the original exception hierarchy had a CapacityError that covered both MemoryError and OverflowError.  But that ship sailed long ago and doesn't seem to have caused problems in practice.

----------------------------------
Examples:

>>> bytes(1 << 62)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#5>", line 1, in <module>
    bytes(1 << 62)
MemoryError

>>> bytes(1 << 65)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in <module>
    bytes(1 << 65)
OverflowError: cannot fit 'int' into an index-sized integer

>>> bytearray(1 << 62)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#6>", line 1, in <module>
    bytearray(1 << 62)
MemoryError

>>> bytearray(1 << 65)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in <module>
    bytearray(1 << 65)
OverflowError: cannot fit 'int' into an index-sized integer

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nosy: +rhettinger
resolution:  -> not a bug
stage:  -> resolved
status: open -> closed

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue45044>
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