Subject: bug#59038: loading this base64 file makes emacs -Q 28.2 peg a core infinitely

From: Po Lu <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2022 19:29:39 +0800

Chris Hecker <[email-masked]> writes:

> Yeah?  This isn’t 1970.

Emacs becoming unusable due to long lines has been fixed in Emacs 29.

> I have 32gb of ram and a 12 core cpu.

Physical memory and the number of processors installed does not really
matter here, unfortunately, as Emacs only uses one processor to process
your (27kb) file.

> (instantly, it’s 27kb)

Which is a lot, even in this day and age.

> or it should at least stop after a few ms and tell me it’s lame and
> needs me to switch manually to another mode.

A few ms is shorter than a roundtrip to and fro the X server over my
current connection.  But:

> I mean, given the 28.2 user experience, there is no opportunity to
> switch to fundamental mode because emacs was hosed.  I don’t even
> think ctrl-g worked for me.

All of this is no longer a problem in Emacs 29, and even if you somehow
still cause redisplay to become wedged, you can set max-redisplay-ticks
to a suitable value.