From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2006-12-09T13:29:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Marshal::dump error on PowerBook G4

Hi,

In message "Re: Marshal::dump error on PowerBook G4"
    on Sat, 9 Dec 2006 03:21:51 +0900, "Emmett Shear" <emmett.shear@gmail.com> writes:

|I've written code for a Splay tree in Ruby, and I'm trying to
|serialize it using Marshal::dump.
|
|If I create a tree with 1,000 or 10,000 nodes, Marshal::dump works
|perfectly. When I get up to 100,000 nodes, Marshal::dump causes the
|irb process to die with the error "Illegal Instruction".

Marshal uses recursion to traverse objects and OSX has far smaller
stack rlimits than other platforms.  As a result of combination of
above, marshaling an object with long reference chain may cause
unexpected process termination.  It is pretty diffucult to fix.

							matz.