The argument to now works correctly, though it's

  not implemented very efficiently. [bug=1520530]

3 files changed, 14 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/NEWS.txt b/NEWS.txt
index 572ad65..1fe2159 100644
--- a/NEWS.txt
+++ b/NEWS.txt
@@ -21,6 +21,9 @@
   BeautifulSoup object being instantiated without a parser being
   specified. [bug=1574647]
 
+* The `limit` argument to `select()` now works correctly, though it's
+  not implemented very efficiently. [bug=1520530]
+
 * Fixed a Python 3 ByteWarning when a URL was passed in as though it
   were markup. Thanks to James Salter for a patch and
   test. [bug=1533762]
diff --git a/bs4/element.py b/bs4/element.py
index 84c4a6e..7a3aa52 100644
--- a/bs4/element.py
+++ b/bs4/element.py
@@ -1537,13 +1537,12 @@ class Tag(PageElement):
                             # don't include it in the context more than once.
                             new_context.append(candidate)
                             new_context_ids.add(id(candidate))
-                            if limit and len(new_context) >= limit:
-                                break
                     elif self._select_debug:
                         print "     FAILURE %s %s" % (candidate.name, repr(candidate.attrs))
 
-
             current_context = new_context
+        if limit and len(current_context) >= limit:
+            current_context = current_context[:limit]
 
         if self._select_debug:
             print "Final verdict:"
diff --git a/bs4/tests/test_tree.py b/bs4/tests/test_tree.py
index 6b2a123..8a05990 100644
--- a/bs4/tests/test_tree.py
+++ b/bs4/tests/test_tree.py
@@ -1676,8 +1676,8 @@ class TestSoupSelector(TreeTest):
     def setUp(self):
         self.soup = BeautifulSoup(self.HTML, 'html.parser')
 
-    def assertSelects(self, selector, expected_ids):
-        el_ids = [el['id'] for el in self.soup.select(selector)]
+    def assertSelects(self, selector, expected_ids, **kwargs):
+        el_ids = [el['id'] for el in self.soup.select(selector, **kwargs)]
         el_ids.sort()
         expected_ids.sort()
         self.assertEqual(expected_ids, el_ids,
@@ -1720,6 +1720,13 @@ class TestSoupSelector(TreeTest):
         for selector in ('html div', 'html body div', 'body div'):
             self.assertSelects(selector, ['data1', 'main', 'inner', 'footer'])
 
+
+    def test_limit(self):
+        self.assertSelects('html div', ['main'], limit=1)
+        self.assertSelects('html body div', ['inner', 'main'], limit=2)
+        self.assertSelects('body div', ['data1', 'main', 'inner', 'footer'],
+                           limit=10)
+
     def test_tag_no_match(self):
         self.assertEqual(len(self.soup.select('del')), 0)