diff --git a/perl-xCAT/xCAT/NodeRange.pm b/perl-xCAT/xCAT/NodeRange.pm
index dd17c1dfe..eb9ee8f1e 100644
--- a/perl-xCAT/xCAT/NodeRange.pm
+++ b/perl-xCAT/xCAT/NodeRange.pm
@@ -179,6 +179,7 @@ sub nodesbycriteria {
 
 sub expandatom { #TODO: implement table selection as an atom (nodetype.os==rhels5.3)
 	my $atom = shift;
+    if ($recurselevel > 4096) { die "NodeRange seems to be hung on evaluating $atom, recursion limit hit"; } 
     unless (scalar(@allnodeset)) { #Build a cache of all nodes, some corner cases will perform worse, but by and large it will do better.  We could do tests to see where the breaking points are, and predict how many atoms we have to evaluate to mitigate, for now, implement the strategy that keeps performance from going completely off the rails
         @allnodeset = $nodelist->getAllAttribs('node','groups');
         %allnodehash = map { $_->{node} => 1 } @allnodeset;
@@ -526,6 +527,7 @@ sub noderange {
   $missingnodes=[];
   #We for now just do left to right operations
   my $range=shift;
+  $range =~ s/['"]//g;
   my $verify = (scalar(@_) >= 1 ? shift : 1);
 
   #excludenodes attribute in site table,