Description of problem: I'm using bash for loops with large-number ranges like {99450..99459} and one time typo led me to {994450..99459}, which led me to unresponsive system till OOM-killer. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Name : bash Arch : x86_64 Version : 4.2.24 Release : 1.fc16 Steps to Reproduce: 1. for i in {1..9999999}; do echo ${i} ; done Actual results: bash that cannot be killed via Ctrl-C/`kill` (`kill -9` works) and eats a LOT of RAM. Expected results: Expansion works or throws error (`too large number` or something like) Additional info: Also reproducible on Centos-5.8 x86_64.
This is expected behaviour. It was several times discussed upstream. You should use c-style for cycle in this case.