Very Deep or Infinite Recursion
The most common cause of stack overflow is excessively deep or infinite recursion. Languages like Scheme, which implement tail-call optimization, allow infinite recursion of a specific sort—tail recursion—to occur without stack overflow. This works because tail-recursion calls do not take up additional stack space.
An example of infinite recursion in C.
int foo { return foo; }The function foo, when it is invoked, continues to invoke itself, using additional space on the stack each time, until the stack overflows resulting in a segmentation fault.
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Famous quotes containing the words deep and/or infinite:
“With an eye made quiet by the power
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We see into the life of things.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
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I wondered what the boy with hairy chest
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Memorial to your infinite unrest.”
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