The symptom you describe, running for a long time (perhaps an infinite
time?), is not a symptom of a stack overflow, so increasing the size of the
stack won't help.
It could be that the calculation is intrinsically computationally expensive,
or that the algorithm being used is not efficient, or that the algorithm is
incorrect and is in an infinite loop, or that there is a gross inefficiency
or bug in some Maxima routine. There is no way to know without actually
seeing the problem.
Without enough information to reproduce the problem, it is very hard to give
any useful advice. It often turns out that the problem is not at all what
the user thinks it is. A good problem report includes the following
information:
- A clear procedure for reproducing the problem. Please verify that your
procedure actually re-creates the problem in a fresh Maxima. If you can't
reproduce it, still send it along, but try to include as much information
about what you did before. The simpler and shorter the procedure, the
better. It's always appreciated when the discoverer of a bug narrows it down
to a simple case. Differentials are always good, too -- that is, cases which
are almost the same but DO work.
- The exact version number you're running under, as shown by
bug_report().
In particular, the type of Lisp being used is very important for some issues
(e.g. behavior on stack overflow), but the CPU speed and memory size are not
usually relevant.
-s
On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 5:26 PM, Thomas Widlar <twidlar at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A friend of mine asked this question.
>
> If I remember right, the stack size is fixed and determined by the Lisp
> subsystem. I have the problem that I cannot compute some complicated metrics
> because Maxima hangs and eats up 99% of CPU time. Probably the stack size is
> exhausted. Is a way to increase the stack? Maybe by recompilation with a
> higher stack size?
>
> His setup is
> <> Maxima 5.16.3, Windows distribution
> running on Windows XP, SP 3
> CPU: Pentium 4, 2.66 GHz
> Memory: 1 GB
>