"f = f (f f f)" crashes the compiler (out of memory)

[asztal]

I was playing on http://elm-lang.org/try seeing how the Elm compiler understands infinite types (because my Windows version 0.16 of Elm just gives me hPutChar: invalid argument (invalid character) when trying to print out infinite types).

I typed f = f (f f f) into the editor and compiled, to see what the error message would be. But that seemed to crash the whole website. (Sorry!). I tried it on my machine and I get elm-make: out of memory.

[jvoigtlaender]

@evancz, is it actually possibly that this was the cause for the breakdown of http://elm-lang.org/try this night?

[evancz]

Could be! It is plausible to me that Snap wouldn't detect this in a pleasant way. Not sure how to guard against it in the short term. Gotta just fix things I guess.

Anyway, it looks like #294 is back from the dead.

[jvoigtlaender]

@asztal, concerning the "hPutChar: invalid argument (invalid character)" stuff, have you tried setting the code page in your shell like so: chcp 65001? That helps some people in this situation on Windows.

[evancz]

In an effort to keep open threads very focused, I am going to close this and open an issue specifically about infinite types. It sounds like there is more to figure out, so @asztal and @jvoigtlaender should continue discussion here until it feels like there's enough understanding to open an issue clearly defining the platform, conditions where it happens or not, and an http://sscce.org/

Edit: see #1231