As of r55652 [1], passing a too high or too low value to a limit
parameter will no longer cause an error, but throw a warning instead
and continue with the maximum (for too high values) or the minimum
(for too low values) limit. This was done to be nicer towards clients
that could potentially be broken by the recent change to srlimit [2].
The change is not live on Wikipedia yet, but I will try to get it
pushed live ASAP.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/55652
[2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-api-announce/2009-August/000…
As of r55615 [1], which has gone live on Wikipedia yesterday, the
maximum limit for list=search is 50 results for regular users and 500
for sysops and bots. This is down from 500/5000 because search queries
using the maximum limit were causing performance issues.
If you specify srlimit=100 or any number higher than your new maximum
limit, you'll get an error message. If you specify srlimit=max ,
everything will keep working, but you'll get fewer results.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)