Calling function exec() with large size can cause a segmentation fault in Python 3.7 -3.10. Please check the following two examples. The example 1 works as expected, while the second one triggers segmentation fault on Python 3.7,3.8,3.9,3.10. The primary difference between these two examples lay on the value of "n".   




Example 1:
=========================================
mylist = []
n = 100000
print(exec("mylist"+"+mylist"*n))
==========================================

The actual output: Recursion Error on Python 3.5-3.10 (as expected)



Example 2:
===================================
mylist = []
n = 1000000
print(exec("mylist"+"+mylist"*n))
===================================

The actual output: Recursive Error on Python 3.5, 3.6 (as expected),  segmentation fault on Python 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 (not as expected)


My system information:

>> python3.10 -V
Python 3.10.0a2

>> python3.9 -V
Python 3.9.0rc1

>> python3.8 -V
Python 3.8.0

>> python3.7 -V
Python 3.7.3

>> python3.6 -V
Python 3.6.12

>> uname -v
#73~16.04.1-Ubuntu

As with the other issues, the underlying segfault is fixed in
PR: https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/23744. It does however raise a RecursionError:

RecursionError: maximum recursion depth exceeded during compilation

As per https://bugs.python.org/issue42609#msg382910, Serhiy implies that the new recursion error is probably expected and acceptable.