From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2004-10-05T23:54:50+09:00
Subject: Re: String limits?


"STEPHEN BECKER I V" <Becker004@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3703ec2d04100507177d3aee72@mail.gmail.com...
> Does a string have a limited size? assuming running on the average
desktop.
>
> i know
> var="a"*1000000
> print var
> prints 1million a's, i even try declaring the values around it
> var0="a"
> var1="b"
> var2="c"
> var1=var1*1000000
> print var2

Memory is the limit (plus maybe some fixed max int that is allowed for a
malloc() call).

> and its a c :) but does ruby actively prevent overflow? am i thinking
> about this in the wrong way?
> Stephen

In case of failure you'll see somethig like this:

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/irb.rb:296:in `inspect': failed to allocate memory
(NoMemoryError)
        from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/irb.rb:296:in `output_value'
....

Normally you don't have to worry at all about overflow problems.  There
are no buffer overflows possible with Ruby strings as there are with C
strings (well, C doesn't really have strings - it just has char*).

Kind regards

    robert