Issue #9589 has been updated by Rune Philosof. This bug should be against the newest ruby stable 2.1.2, but I cannot change that. I just encountered it in a spec that looks like this: require 'spec_helper' describe "test" do let(:die) { "this is fine" } context "with bad context" do let(:die) { die + ", but this will fail" } it "it throws segmentation fault" do expect { die }.to raise_error("Segmentation Fault") end end end This is with ruby 2.1.2 and rspec-core 2.14.8 ---------------------------------------- Bug #9589: Stack level too deep during eval causes segmentation fault https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9589#change-47410 * Author: carlos aya * Status: Open * Priority: Normal * Assignee: * Category: * Target version: * ruby -v: 1.9.3 * Backport: 1.9.3: UNKNOWN, 2.0.0: UNKNOWN, 2.1: UNKNOWN ---------------------------------------- The following silly code, which imho should generate a " stack level too deep (SystemStackError)", segfaults $ echo 'eval($_)' | ruby -n -e 'eval($_)' I thought it may be a bug, not sure. My version: carlos-mac$ ruby -v ruby 1.9.3p327 (2012-11-10) [x86_64-darwin12.2.0] -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/