Issue #20488 has been reported by kddnewton (Kevin Newton). ---------------------------------------- Misc #20488: Document source file size restrictions https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20488 * Author: kddnewton (Kevin Newton) * Status: Open ---------------------------------------- I was hoping we might be able to decide on an official maximum size for a source file in terms of bytes/lines/columns/etc. Ruby uses fixed integer sizes to represent line numbers, column numbers, offsets, etc. These can overflow with files that are too big. Sometimes they will fail with cryptic messages like: ``` ruby: negative string size (or size too big) (ArgumentError) ``` (That's for 2^31 "a"s in a row.) Note that for python for the same file you will get: ``` OverflowError: Parser column offset overflow - source line is too big ``` and for perl you will get: ``` Identifier too long at test.pl line 1. ``` For files with 2^32 newlines, Ruby just crashes on my machine with the current parser (prism finishes, but its newline counter overflows so it gets all the offsets wrong). Would it be okay to say: * maximum line: 31 bits * maximum column: 32 bits * maximum file byte size: 32 bits This would also help with memory savings — I would like to only use 32 bits for offsets in the file, as opposed to the current 64 bits I'm using (which seems unnecessarily large). -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/