Re: hung for good?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg23602] Re: [mg23592] hung for good?
- From: Andrzej Kozlowski <andrzej at tuins.ac.jp>
- Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 02:16:04 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
on 5/22/00 7:12 AM, Matt Enlow at matt at enlow.net wrote: > > Is it possible to give Mathematica (4.0) an expression to evaluate that will > send it into an infinite loop? (The evaluation itself does not contain any > loops.) Or does it have some way of knowing when it's "stuck"? I realize > some evaluations may take a very long time... but is there some way of > knowing whether any progress is being made while I'm waiting? > > Thanks in advance, > > Matt Enlow > Bridgeport, CT > > It is difficult to enter an infinite loop in in the ordinary sense in Mathematica because of the $IterationLimit global variable, which is by default set to the value In[14]:= $IterationLimit Out[14]= 4096 This stops you from getting into infinite loops like this one: In[15]:= x := y; y := x; In[16]:= x $IterationLimit::"itlim" : "Iteration limit of 4096 exceeded." Out[16]= Hold[x] (Of course you can set $IterationLimit to Infinity and then this protection will be gone). However there is nothing to prevent you from starting computations that run for ever and which are not strictly infinite loops, for example, the following trivial one: In[17]:= FixedPoint[(x = # + 1) &, 1] Once this starts running you can inspect the current value of x by choosing Kernel>Evaluation>Enter Subsession and evaluating x: (Dialog) In[18]:= x (Dialog) Out[18]= 520018 You can continue the computation by choosing Kernel>Evaluation>Exit Subsession and (usually) abort it by choosing next Kernel>Abort Evaluation. -- Andrzej Kozlowski Toyama International University, JAPAN For Mathematica related links and resources try: <http://www.sstreams.com/Mathematica/>