Method overloading produce java.lang.StackOverflowError

As I know java has method overloading feature, so I am interesting why method annotated as B produce java.lang.StackOverflowError. I think this might be connected to some recursive call, but I did not have any compiler warnings. Can someone explain why I got exception.

B

java.lang.StackOverflowError

public static void main(String args)
Set<Integer> set = getSet(1);


//A
private static Set<Integer> getSet(List<Integer> numbers)
return new HashSet<>(numbers);


//B throwing exception
private static Set<Integer> getSet(Integer number)
return getSet(number);



getSet(number)

3 Answers
3

This:

private static Set<Integer> getSet(Integer base)
return getSet(base);



calls itself; you probably want to call it with a List:

List

return Arrays.asList(base); // or List.of(base) since java-9


Just look at your getSet method. You call it once, it calls itself again.

Maybe you wanted to do this?

private static Set<Integer> getSet(Integer base)
return getSet(Arrays.asList(base));



You run in infinite calls to private static Set<Integer> getSet(Integer number). First call is from public static void main(String args) After this the method invokes itself without any check to break the sequence of self calls

private static Set<Integer> getSet(Integer number)

public static void main(String args)

private static Set<Integer> getSet(Integer number)
return getSet(number);



getSet is overloaded but number being of type Integer calls itself. This becomes infinite sequence of same method calls and as each method invoke results in an entry in stack (to store the local states of the method call), stack needs memory which has a threshold , which gets exhausted after a certain number of method calls resulting in StackOverflowException.

getSet

number

Integer

StackOverflowException

Also there is nothing wrong in such calls if we look from the perspective of a Compiler. Its only that there must be a conditional check whcih can prevent the recursion turning into infinite recursion.

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