R3 stack limits too low

[Siskin-Bot]

Submitted by: pekr

While we were told R3 stack limits are user settable, they are too low by default, and should be imo adjusted to some more usefull level:

REBOL level recursion:

>> cnt: 0 recursion: does [++ cnt recursion] recursion
** Internal error: stack overflow

>> cnt
== 4004

Parse level recursion:

>> cnt: 0 rule: [(++ cnt) rule] parse "123" [some rule]
** Internal error: internal limit reached: parse

>> cnt
== 512

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^{Imported from: CureCode [ Version: alpha 86 Type: Issue Platform: Windows Category: Unspecified Reproduce: Always Fixed-in:alpha 87 ]
Imported from: metaeducation#1252}

Comments:

Rebolbot commented on Oct 6, 2009:

Submitted by: Carl

The stack size needs to be balanced against the memory footprint you want.

Currently, it's set for a small footprint. However, it can be expanded in A87 with this:

secure none
evoke [stack-size 1000000]

>> cnt: 0 recursion: does [++ cnt recursion] recursion
>> cnt
== 42664

The limit here is imposed by the C stack, which in A87 reserves about 4MB.

The PARSE function is now limited only by the C stack, not by a depth counter.

cnt: 0 rule: [(++ cnt) rule] parse "123" [some rule]
>> cnt
== 42660

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Rebolbot commented on Oct 8, 2009:

Submitted by: pekr

It is nice we can set the stack higher, but I thought that we will make it so (at least to R2 level) by default. Is there really a reason, why R3 default stack setting is nearly 1/4 of the R2 value? Also disabling entire security in order to raise the stack value is surely not a good idea (more in #1259 )

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Rebolbot mentioned this issue on Jan 12, 2016:
Need secure 'stack keyword

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[Oldes]

@carls I'm quite puzzled with this one. It is working as expected (throwing the error) when I compile using mingw compiler on Windows, but crashes, when I use clang or msvc (Visual Studio 15.9.8)

[Oldes]

Ok... I found it... the reason is, that the binary stack is overflowed sooner than the one checked in Rebol. The difference is, that my gcc build is using linker option -Wl,--stack=4194300 while by default, Visual Studio is by using stack of size 1MB. When I use /STACK:4194300 in my VS build, than the stack overflow is detected at runtime before crash as expected.

With clang I must use something like: -Wl,-stack:0x03E8000

Setting limit using mentioned evoke is not much useful, because the stack size must be in bounds defined with above linker switches during compilation and also there are hard-coded limits in the code. Like here .

Anyway.. In my 64bit builds I'm getting cnt = 12184 with clang and 15052 with msvc, which is more than 4004.