On Thu, 16 Nov 2000 17:20:32 -0500, Simon Lemieux wrote:
>> There has been quite a long thread about this issues a few months
>> (weeks) ago. Warp and Ron gave good ideas.
>> IMHO memory and disk consumption are issues.
>> If you make a scene featuring an infinite loop adding objects to an
>> union, you will have POV crash after running out of memory.
>> Unfortunately it is likely that some other processes die to, including
>> system services.
>> If you open a file and write to it in an infinite loop, you can fill
>> your disk completly, which can be harmful in some cases (under Un*x,
>> filling /tmp or /var can have odd consequences). Even if you suppress
>> user I/O, one can still decide to render a nearly empty scene (for
>> speed) at a huge resolution: 65536*65536*24bpp takes 1.5 Gb...
>> 
>> For these reasons I would suggest you use process limitations, such as
>> ulimit and quotas under Un*x.
>
>Thanks, I already thought about this... that's why I asked a survey on
>povray.general...  to do a manual limitation... and my program could parse the
>file and check it to see if there is no loop or anything...

No it can't.  That's a famous theorem by from Computer Science, called the 
Halting Problem.  It's insoluble.  (Unless you plan to forbid loops entirely, 
in which case it'll be pretty useless.)

-- 
Ron Parker   http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html
My opinions.  Mine.  Not anyone else's.

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