Mike Crowe wrote:
> Do you think that if I added such a limit and diagnostic then the patch
> would be acceptable?

I'd rather fix the underlying problem more systematically. How about the 
attached patch instead? I've installed this on Savannah so you can give it a 
whirl easily. It fixes the problem for me so I'm boldly marking this bug report 
as done; we can unmark it later if it turns out that I'm wrong.