I'm going on very vague memory here (and Google isn't helpful when
my blood caffeine levels fall too low), but I think the change was:

ruby-1.8.2/ChangeLog

Sat Oct 25 09:18:04 2003  Yukihiro Matsumoto  ruby-1.8.2/ChangeLog-
   * eval.c (rb_method_missing): protect exception from within
     "inspect".  (ruby-bugs:PR#1204)

and the problem was something to do with missing methods / inspect / and
an exception getting locked in a death spiral recursion.  I'd link to
the bug report, but for some reason I'm only finding the Japanese.

-- MarkusQ


On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 04:00, Thomas Counsell wrote:
> Thank you Marcus.  I'm running ruby  1.8.1 (2003-12-25) that I compiled 
> from source on my Mac (OS X 10.3.5).  I have looked at the ruby 
> changelog and can't see mention of this recursion bug, but I have no 
> experience with changelog files, so I may have missed it. I will try 
> installing 1.8.2 over the weekend and see if that fixes it.  Thanks, Tom
> 
> Markus wrote:
> > I'm not sure at all if this is it, but there was a bug in ruby 1.8
> > (fixed, I think, in 1.8.1 or 1.8.2) that caused very deep recursion in
> > some exceptions.  Some suggestions:
> > 
> >       * If you can, try it under 1.8.2; I wouldn't recommend blindly
> >         upgrading as there are some semantics changes between 1.8 and
> >         1.8.1 that (at least for me) broke things.  But it is definitely
> >         worth testing
> >       * Search the change logs for the bug.  If you compiled ruby from
> >         source (or can) you may be able to back port the patch.
> > 
> > Let us know what you find out; I'll let you know if I think of anything
> > further.  If you can't try either of the things I've suggested, give a
> > bit more background information about the environment & I'll take a look
> > at it this evening.
> > 
> >  -- Markus
> >