Recursion - Call stack fails to pop when testing the maximum stack size

Question

Basically call stack will start to pop out the function calls one by one when the last-in function call returns. But when ever I try to create a call stack nearer to the size of its maximum, An uncaught expression is getting raised.

//Code for testing the stack size
var cnt = 0;

function test(){
 //Max stack size is nearer to ~41800
 if(cnt++ == 41763){
  console.log('finished');
  return true;
 }
 return test();
}

test();

So the above code is throwing an exception for me in chromium Version 49.0.2623.112 m like below,

Uncaught exception

< true

Please not that the above error has no message in it. My question here is,

The last function call in the stack has returned true that means the stack size was not exceeded. why didn't the other function calls in that stack was not returned? And what is the reason for this blank exception message?

Answer 1

The problem here is

console.log('finished');

this adds some extra functions to the call stack that will let the limit exceed, but through exception handling your code gets executed anyway.

Try to run it without console.log and you see you get to the limit and see either a true or an exception.