5plit_func has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear perlmonks, I have a question to ask that baffles me. While coding i just decided to try out a way to flood my operating system with Perl's request i all i got was a message saying (Out of Memory!) without getting any sort of warnings from Perl even though strict,warnings ,diagnostic where enabled. Please can any one tell me why i got this message. see the code i used for the request. 
my $flood_network = "********************\n" x 1_000_000_000_000;

print("$flood_network");

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Re: Out of memory! without system errors
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Dec 05, 2013 at 01:45 UTC
    all i got was a message saying (Out of Memory!) without getting any sort of warnings from Perl

    The Out of memory message is a warning from Perl; telling you you've asked for more memory -- ~20,000GB -- than your system has available.

    You could achieve your expected result by doing:

    print "********************\n" for 1 .. 1_000_000_000_000;

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    Of course, you might have to wait a while.

    With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
    Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
    "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
    In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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[d/l]
      BrowserUk, thank you very much for your explanation i am humbled by your explanation and alternative given to achieve my playfulness using Perl.
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Re: Out of memory! without system errors
by Athanasius (Archbishop) on Dec 05, 2013 at 03:39 UTC

    As BrowserUk says, the message you’re getting is a Perl runtime error. To confirm this for yourself, use the block form of eval:

    13:38 >perl -Mstrict -wE "eval { my $s = '*' x 1e12; say $s; }; warn q
+q[\nPerl runtime error: $@] if $@;"

Perl runtime error: Out of memory during string extend at -e line 1.

13:38 >

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    Hope that helps,

    Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

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[d/l]
      :) I can't actually trigger that error with that code on my win32 perl ... and its an old machine with 500mb
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        I bet you're running a pre-5.10 version of Perl.

        With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
        Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
        "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
        In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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Re: Out of memory! without system errors (bartender)
by Anonymous Monk on Dec 05, 2013 at 01:37 UTC

    Please can any one tell me why i got this message.

    Because you're out of memory

    Its like you walk into a bar, and ask the bartender for whiskey, and the bartender says "out of whiskey"

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Re: Out of memory! without system errors
by Laurent_R (Canon) on Dec 05, 2013 at 07:30 UTC
    In a way, Perl is being quite nice with you: it warns you that you are requesting too much memory and stops running, rather than actually exhausting the memory and bringing your system down.
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