Recursive call in Table Cell merging that causes a recursion error if the table is too big

[grazzouk]

There seems to be some recursion in the _grow_to method here that's used for table cell merging, that means that after a specific number of cells the code fails (for a single column table the max number of cells seems to be the recursion limit less 15). Is there a way around this that doesn't involve increasing the recursion limit?

Example code:

import sys
import docx


doc = docx.Document()
table = doc.add_table(984, 1)
table._cells[0].merge(table._cells[-1])
print('Merging 984 cells succeeds')

try:
    doc = docx.Document()
    table = doc.add_table(985, 1)
    table._cells[0].merge(table._cells[-1])
except RecursionError:
    print('but merging 985 cells fails')

sys.setrecursionlimit(1001)

doc = docx.Document()
table = doc.add_table(985, 1)
table._cells[0].merge(table._cells[-1])
print('unless you increase the recursion limit')

[scanny]

Yeah, I see that docx.oxml.table.CT_Tc._grow_to() is recursive. I'm sure that can be made iterative.