>>> l = [b''] * (100*1024*1024)
[104918914 refs]
>>> d = b''.join(l)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
SystemError: error return without exception set

(you'll have to adjust the list size based on your system memory size)

New changeset 9af5a2611202 by Christian Heimes in branch 'default':
Issue #16592: stringlib_bytes_join doesn't raise MemoryError on allocation failure
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/9af5a2611202

Antoine, on Unix you can restrict the address space of a program to test the issue without almost crashing and OOMing your box. ;)

>>> import resource
>>> resource.setrlimit(resource.RLIMIT_AS, (1024*1024*100, 1024*1024*100))
>>> l = [b''] * (100*1024*70)
>>> d = b''.join(l)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
MemoryError

I wonder why I don't see a memory error in Python 3.3 or earlier. Any idea?

> I wonder why I don't see a memory error in Python 3.3 or earlier. Any idea?

See issue #15958. Now join() accept arbitrary buffer objects, which can be modified during iteration, and therefore need a temporary list of Py_buffers.

> Antoine, on Unix you can restrict the address space of a program to
> test the issue without almost crashing and OOMing your box. ;)

Ah, thanks, but I didn't crash and OOM it, since it has no swap: memory errors get raised quickly here :)