How big is the stack??

**mgeno216** · 03-04-2011, 03:22 AM

I recently wrote a program which overflowed to stack, without an infinite loop or anything error similar to that. I was just putting too much data on the stack. I am not sure exactly how deep in recursion I ever got, but I wouldn't be surprised that in worst-case scenario, I was 1000 layers deep in recursion. I was able to fix this problem, but was wondering how big is the stack that handles method calls. From my googleing there doesn't seem to be a consistent answer nor is there much documentation on it.

Thanks for any help,
Mike

**Junky** · 03-04-2011, 03:31 AM

It most likely depends upon how much memory is available. But why do you care? If you are gettinga StackOverflowException then you must be recursing too deeply. Fix your code.

**mgeno216** · 03-04-2011, 03:35 AM

I am just curious, my code is fine. So it is relative to your computer's memory?

**chandu_g_g** · 03-04-2011, 03:47 AM

it mostly depends on the space of how much it is allocated so be careful about that

**mgeno216** · 03-04-2011, 03:56 AM

ok, but how much is that? Is it say a percentage of mem available? Is it a fixed number of bytes (i read from one source that is was a fixed 400kb by default, but that seems alittle low)?

If no one knows, that is fine. But i am just curious, so i would appreciate any info that people can pass along.

Thanks,
Mike

**pbrockway2** · 03-04-2011, 04:56 AM

If no one knows, that is fine.

I suspect that if no-one knows that's not ignorance, but just a consequence of the question not having an answer. See the Java VM spec: 3.5.2 Java Virtual Machine Stacks.

**JosAH** · 03-04-2011, 08:04 AM

Originally Posted by mgeno216

ok, but how much is that? Is it say a percentage of mem available? Is it a fixed number of bytes (i read from one source that is was a fixed 400kb by default, but that seems alittle low)?

If no one knows, that is fine. But i am just curious, so i would appreciate any info that people can pass along.

Thanks,
Mike

I don't know the default values but you can set the initial stack size with the -Xms flag and the maximum stack size can be set with the -Xmx flag. Type "java -X" for a listing of all those non-standard flags. On an ordinary PC when a StackOverflowError is thrown you can be sure that your recursive method(s) went all the way down.

kind regards,

Jos