Executing main(...)

exercise No. 217

Q:

Executing the following program

01 public class LackInit {
02 ...
03   static void main() {
04      main();
05   }
06 ...

yields:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StackOverflowError
     at de.hdm_stuttgart.mi.sd1.extra.LackInit.main(LackInit.java:4)
     at de.hdm_stuttgart.mi.sd1.extra.LackInit.main(LackInit.java:4)
          ... 1020 more identical lines omitted for brevity ...
     at de.hdm_stuttgart.mi.sd1.extra.LackInit.main(LackInit.java:4)
     at de.hdm_stuttgart.mi.sd1.extra.LackInit.main(LackInit.java:4)

Process finished with exit code 1

What's happening here? Why is execution being terminated by an exception?

A:

Our main() method calls itself recursively until breaching the JVM's limit resulting in the observed StackOverflowError exception: 

main() Stack frame 1
 ┗━▶ main() Stack frame 2
      ┗━▶ main() Stack frame 3
           ┗━▶ main() Stack frame 4
             ...
                ┗━▶ main() Stack frame 1024
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