java.lang.StackOverflowError due to recursion

Question

My problem is that I usually get a java.lang.StackOverflowError when I use recursion. My question is - why does recursion cause stackoverflow so much more than loops do, and is there any good way of using recursion to avoid stack overflow?

This is an attempt to solve problem 107, it works well for their example but runs out of stack space for the problem it self.

//-1 16 12 21 -1 -1 -1 16 -1 -1 17 20 -1 -1 12 -1 -1 28 -1 31 -1 21 17 28 -1 18 19 23 -1 20 -1 18 -1 -1 11 -1 -1 31 19 -1 -1 27 -1 -1 -1 23 11 27 -1
public class tries
{
    public static int n=7,min=Integer.MAX_VALUE;
    public static boolean[][] wasHere=new boolean[n][60000];
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        int[] lines=new int[n]; Arrays.fill(lines, -1000); lines[0]=0;
        int[][] networkMatrix=new int[n][n];
        Scanner reader=new Scanner(System.in);
        int sum=0;
        for(int k=0; k<n; k++)
        {
            for(int r=0; r<n; r++)
            {
                networkMatrix[k][r]=reader.nextInt();
                if(networkMatrix[k][r]!=-1) sum+=networkMatrix[k][r];
                Arrays.fill(wasHere[k], false);
            }
        }
        recursive(lines,networkMatrix,0,0);
        System.out.println((sum/2)-min);
    }
    public static void recursive(int[] lines, int[][] networkMatrix, int row,int lastRow)
    {       
        wasHere[row][value((int)use.sumArr(lines))]=true;
        if(min<sum(lines)) return;
        if(isAllNotMinus1000(lines)) min=sum(lines); 
        int[][] copyOfMatrix=new int[n][n];
        int[] copyOfLines;
        for(int i=0; i<n; i++)
        {
            copyOfLines=Arrays.copyOf(lines, lines.length);
            for(int k=0; k<n; k++)  copyOfMatrix[k]=Arrays.copyOf(networkMatrix[k], networkMatrix[k].length);
            if(i!=0&&copyOfMatrix[i][row]!=0) copyOfLines[i]=copyOfMatrix[i][row];
            copyOfMatrix[i][row]=0; copyOfMatrix[row][i]=0;
            if(networkMatrix[row][i]==-1) continue;
            if(wasHere[i][value((int)use.sumArr(copyOfLines))]) continue;
            if(min<sum(copyOfLines)) continue;
            recursive(copyOfLines,copyOfMatrix,i,row);
        }
    }
    public static boolean isAllNotMinus1000(int[] lines)
    {
        for(int i=0; i<lines.length; i++) {if(lines[i]==-1000) return false;}
        return true;
    }
    public static int value(int n)
    {
        if(n<0) return (60000+n);
        return n;
    }
    public static int sum(int[] arr)
    {
        int sum=0;
        for(int i=0; i<arr.length; i++) 
        {
            if(arr[i]==-1000) continue;
            sum+=arr[i];
        }
        return sum;
    }
}

Answer 1

why does recursion cause stackoverflow so much more than loops do

Because each recursive call uses some space on the stack. If your recursion is too deep, then it will result in StackOverflow, depending upon the maximum allowed depth in the stack.

When using recursion, you should be very careful and make sure that you provide a base case. A base case in recursion is the condition based on which the recursion ends, and the stack starts to unwind. This is the major reason of recursion causing StackOverflow error. If it doesn't find any base case, it will go into an infinite recursion, which will certainly result in error, as Stack is finite only.

Answer 2

In most cases, a stack overflow occurs because a recursive method was ill-defined, with a non-existent or unreachable ending condition, which causes the stack memory space to be exhausted. A correctly written recursion should not produce a stack overflow.

However, there are situations where a method can produce a stack overflow even if it was correctly implemented. For instance:

• A fast-growing (say, exponential) recursion. For example: the naive recursive implementation of the Fibonacci function
• A very big input data, that will eventually cause the stack space to be exhausted

Bottom line: it all depends on the particular case, it's impossible to generalize regarding what causes a stack overflow.