std::vector<T> constructor does not throw when asked for an erroneous initialization size

[Emmanuel Rachelson]

When asked to allocate memory for a very large vector (memory chuncks larger than 2^31), the constructor of std::vector<T> does not throw a bad_alloc exception and the built vector reports an erroneous size. A simple testcase reproduces the bug on a 32-bit architecture:

#include<vector>
#include<iostream>
#include<limits>

int main(){
  std::vector<double> v;
  std::cout << "vector<double> max size = " << v.max_size() << std::endl;
  std::cout << "std::numeric_limits<size_t>::max() = " << std::numeric_limits<size_t>::max() << std::endl;
  // sizeof(double) = 8
  // 2^31 / 8 - 1 = 268435455
  std::vector<double> vec(268435455, 8.4);
  std::cout << "requested size = 268435455, vec size = " << vec.size() << std::endl;
  std::vector<double>().swap(vec);
  // 2^31 / 8 = 268435456
  std::vector<double> vec2(268435456, 8.4);
  std::cout << "requested size = 268435456, vec size = " << vec2.size() << std::endl;
  std::vector<double>().swap(vec2);
  // for the example
  std::vector<double> vec3(300000000, 8.4);
  std::cout << "requested size = 300000000, vec size = " << vec3.size() << std::endl;
  std::vector<double>().swap(vec3);
}

Similar values are obtained for capacity() also.

Note that bad_alloc exceptions are being thrown for even larger requested sizes (500 000 000 for instance) but it seems they should also be thrown starting at sizes corresponding to 2^31.
I'm running Lucid Lynx (10.04) on a MacBookPro:
Core2Duo (2.53GHz), 3.7 Gb RAM
kernel 2.6.32-24-generic-pae
gcc (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) 4.4.3

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: gcc 4:4.4.3-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-24.42-generic-pae 2.6.32.15+drm33.5
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-24-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia wl
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Sep 10 12:57:52 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=fr_BE.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gcc-defaults