CareerCup

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>

void StackOverFlow()
{
CONTEXT context;

// we are interested control registers
context.ContextFlags = CONTEXT_CONTROL;

// get the details
GetThreadContext(GetCurrentThread(), &context);

// print the stack pointer
printf("Esp: %X\n", context.Esp);

// this will eventually overflow the stack
StackOverFlow();
}

DWORD ExceptionFilter(EXCEPTION_POINTERS *pointers, DWORD dwException)
{
return EXCEPTION_EXECUTE_HANDLER;
}

void main()
{
CONTEXT context;

// we are interested control registers
context.ContextFlags = CONTEXT_CONTROL;

// get the details
GetThreadContext(GetCurrentThread(), &context);

// print the stack pointer
printf("Esp: %X\n", context.Esp);

__try
{
// cause a stack overflow
StackOverFlow();
}
__except(ExceptionFilter(GetExceptionInformation(), GetExceptionCode()))
{
printf("\n****** ExceptionFilter fired ******\n");
}
}

Stack overflow can happen in two different ways.
1) Too many function calls, may be infinite recursion.
2) Very large stack frames.

First case surely be found with stack trace help. Where as the second case is very difficult to find. Fortunately, writing program to create the second case is very difficult.

Using stacktrace..e.printstacktrace() in java and analyse the calls.
common cause:Recursive function(unable to find exit point)
infinite loop.
One Example:reading huge XML(repeated data elements,its trying to read and read..)

in case of stack frames being too big, which happens if we try declaring too many automatic variables which exceeds the default stack size for the thread, stack overflow occurs. so for each thread we can keep track of total size of automatic variables allocated and check if its less than the stack size for the thread.
we can also make the variables static to avoid stack overflow.