[On 05 May, @16:32, Peter Stephenson wrote in "Re: Large COLUMNS crashes zsh ..."] > >export COLUMNS=10000000000000000 > > > >When doing this zsh crashes. I know it seems stupid, but wouldn't it be > >sane to ignore such large number, or simply set it to the largest > >possible? > > Probably, but the trouble is there's no single "largest possible". > We've just run into a similar problem with the maximum size of arrays. > If it doesn't crash the shell, it's potentially useful, but we don't > know a priori how large that is. Some checks on malloc might help, but > that's a big can of worms, too: once you need it in one place, you need > it all over. Furthermore, I've got a feeling that on many virtual > memory systems the malloc might succeed but cause havoc later. bash seems handle this just fine. And it resets the value to something more sane (don't know if that is a bug or feature): $ export COLUMNS=10000000000000000 $ echo $COLUMNS 10000000000000000 $ ls ...bunch of files... $ echo $COLUMNS 100 $ This is with bash3. Zsh on the other hand is trying to trash my machine :) -- grtz, - Miek http://www.miek.nl http://www.nlnetlabs.nl PGP: 6A3C F450 6D4E 7C6B C23C F982 258B 85CF 3880 D0F6
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