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Re: [PATCH] fix infinite loop eating all the memory
From: |
Alfred M\. Szmidt |
Subject: |
Re: [PATCH] fix infinite loop eating all the memory |
Date: |
Fri, 07 Oct 2005 17:48:05 +0200 |
`tail -f /dev/zero` eats all the available memory and swap until
tail gets killed by the OOM killer (on linux, at least).
Since /dev/zero is of "infinite" size, tail does the right thing in
reading it until all memory/swap is exhausted.
,----[ (standards)Semantics ]
| 4.1 Writing Robust Programs
| ===========================
|
| Avoid arbitrary limits on the length or number of _any_ data structure,
| including file names, lines, files, and symbols, by allocating all data
| structures dynamically. In most Unix utilities, "long lines are
| silently truncated". This is not acceptable in a GNU utility.
`----