From: Roy Patrick Tan <rtan@...>
Date: 2001-11-24T12:38:11+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26291] Ruby and Mac OS X: stack level limit?

Hi,

I recently downloaded Ruby fot Mac OS X (following the link from Apple's 
page). I tried to install rockit, but got a "stack level too deep 
error." Basically, it seems the OS X implementation for ruby only allows 
up to a certain (low) call stack depth.

I wrote this simple power procedure:

---

def power(base, n)
     if (n == 1) then
         return base
     elsif (n == 0) then
         return 1
     else
         return base * power(base, n - 1)
     end
end

1000.times do |x|
     print(x, ": ", power(2,x), "\n")
end

---

Ruby on OS X will only run up to x = 35 :

35: 34359738368
test.rb:7:in `power': stack level too deep (SystemStackError)

While ruby in linux will complete the program.

The download from apple was for Ruby 1.6.4, and I tried compiling 1.6.5 
but got the same problem.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem?