Stack overflows while type checking programs with long chains of constructors

[vicuna]

Original bug ID: 5368
Reporter: till
Assigned to: @garrigue
Status: closed (set by @gasche on 2011-12-13T09:35:19Z)
Resolution: not fixable
Priority: normal
Severity: crash
Version: 3.12.1
Category: ~DO NOT USE (was: OCaml general)

Bug description

Here's a quick script to generate a program with 100000 elements; on my current machine the compiler segfaults while trying to type check it:

cat > big_list.ml <<EOF
let big x = [
$(yes "true;" | head -n 100000)
]
EOF

(This bug was triggered on auto-generated code)

[vicuna]

Comment author: @garrigue

There is no easy solution to this one.
Basically, the type inference algorithm being recursive, overly deep input leads to stack overflow, and only a major rewrite would solved that.
The error message could be improved, but I'm not sure there would be any benefit: if the list is that long, the reason is clear enough anyway...