Constructor calling itself

Question

I have recently found out that no argument constructor and multiple argument constructor cannnot call each other in turns. What is the underlying reason of this limitation? Some might say that constructors are where resources are initialised. So they must not be called recursively. I want to know if this is the only reason or not. Functions/methods/procedures can be called recursively. Why not constructors?

Answer 1

The answer lies in the fact that the call to another constructor is the first line of any constructor and hence your if condition to break out of recursion will never be executed and hence stack overflow.

Answer 2

The main purpose of the constructor is to initialize all the global variables described in a particular class.

For Example: 

public class Addition(){

int value1;
int value2;

   public Addition(){ // default constructor
       a=10;
       b=10;
   }

  public Addition(int a, int b){
      this(); // constructors having parameters , overloaded constructor
      value1=a;
      value2=b;
  }
}

public class Main(){
  public static void main(){
     Addition addition = new Addition(); //or
     Addition addition = new Addition(15,15);  
  }
}

Here, if you want to make instance of the class you can either make instance by calling default constructor or by calling constructor having parameters. So the constructors are overloaded and not overridden. If you want to call another constructor, that can only be done be putting either this() or super() in the first line of the constructor. But this is not prefferable.