What is the maximum length of a character function argument in python/jython?
I've reviewed the documentation on python.org and no luck
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4What's a character function? Can you give an example? – Carl F. Sep 15 '11 at 01:03
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@Carl I think he means a function argument that is a string of characters. – agf Sep 15 '11 at 01:10
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I thought maybe it was http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/oracle/prog2/ch11_01.htm – Carl F. Sep 15 '11 at 01:14
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Python passes function arguments by reference, so the maximum length of a string passed to a function is purely dependent on the maximum length of a string.
It so happens that the maximum length of a string is platform dependent (Address space and/or RAM, generally) - see the question What is the max length of a Python string for details.
In python (and I'd assume this would work in jython as well) you can find out this value with sys.maxsize:
>>>import sys
>>>print sys.maxsize
9223372036854775807
From the docs:
maxsize: The largest positive integer supported by the platform’s Py_ssize_t type, and thus the maximum size lists, strings, dicts, and many other containers can have.
Your max length string will not be anywhere near this many characters, mind you.
