Stack overflow C++

Question

This is my code. When I access dtr array in initImg function it gives a stack overflow exception. What might be the reason?

#define W 1000
#define H 1000
#define MAX 100000 
void initImg(int img[], float dtr[])
{
    for(int i=0;i<W;i++)
        for(int j=0;j<H;j++)
            img[i*W+j]=255;

    for(int j=0;j<H;j++)
    {
        img[j] = 0;
        img[W*(W-1)+j] = 0;
    }
    for(int i=0;i<W;i++)
    {
        img[i*W] = 0;
        img[i*W+H-1] = 0;
    }
    for(int i=0;i<W;i++)
        for(int j=0;j<H;j++)
        { 
            if(img[i*W+j]==0)
                dtr[i*W+j] = 0;    // <------here
            else
                dtr[i*W+j] = MAX;  // <------here
        }
}
int main()
{
    int image[W*H];
    float dtr[W*H];
    initImg(image,dtr);
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

This:

int image[W*H];
float dtr[W*H];

Creates each a 4 * 1000 * 1000 ~ 4 MB array into the stack. The stack space is limited, and usually it's less than 4 MB. Don't do that, create the arrays in the heap using new.

int *image = new int[W*H];
float *dtr = new float[W*H];

Answer 2

Your stack probably isn't big enough to hold a million ints and a million floats (8MB). So as soon as you try to access beyond your stack size, your operating system throws you an error. Objects or arrays above a certain size need to be allocated on the heap - preferably using a self-managing self-bounds-checking class such as std::vector - the specific size depends on your implementation.