[GENERAL] Infinite recursion detected... How do I prevent that?

[Alban Hertroys]

I have a rule similar to this:
CREATE RULE rule_branch_delete AS
ON DELETE TO tree
DO DELETE
     FROM tree
    WHERE ancestor_id IS NOT NULL
      AND OLD.child_id = ancestor_id;
The data is oraganized like this:
ancestor_id     child_id
================================
NULL            1
1               2
1               3
1               4
1               5
1               6
1               7
1               8
2               4
2               5
2               6
3               7
3               8
etc.
This is an optimization table that relates all nodes in a branch to all 
it's ancestor nodes; to it's parent, to it's grand parent to it's grand 
grand parent, etc.

The tree is 3 to 5 levels deep. The intention is to delete all children 
of a branch that share the same ancestor when an ancestor gets deleted. 
This happens recursively, of course.

If I try a delete on the tree table I get "Infinite recursion detected 
on rules on tree". I'm pretty sure it's not "infinite" in my case, how 
can I make it delete the records regardless this "infinity"?

At the moment I use a trigger, but I would prefer a rule.
Alban.
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