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C#: How to test for StackOverflowException

Asked 2010-01-06T11:40:01.510
22

Say you have a method that could potentially get stuck in an endless method-call loop and crash with a StackOverflowException. For example my naive RecursiveSelect method mentioned in this question.

Starting with the .NET Framework version 2.0, a StackOverflowException object cannot be caught by a try-catch block and the corresponding process is terminated by default. Consequently, users are advised to write their code to detect and prevent a stack overflow. For example, if your application depends on recursion, use a counter or a state condition to terminate the recursive loop.

Taking that information (from this answer) into account, since the exception can't be caught, is it even possible to write a test for something like this? Or would a test for this, if that failed, actually break the whole test-suite?

Note: I know I could just try it out and see what happens, but I am more interested in general information about it. Like, would different test frameworks and test runners handle this differently? Should I avoid a test like this even though it might be possible?

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How about checking the number of frames on the stack in an assert statement?

const int MaxFrameCount = 100000;
Debug.Assert(new StackTrace().FrameCount < MaxFrameCount);

In your example from the related question this would be (The costly assert statement would be removed in the release build):

public static IEnumerable<T> SelectRecursive<T>(this IEnumerable<T> subjects, Func<T, IEnumerable<T>> selector)
{
    const int MaxFrameCount = 100000;
    Debug.Assert(new StackTrace().FrameCount < MaxFrameCount);

    // Stop if subjects are null or empty
    if(subjects == null || !subjects.Any())
        yield break;

    // For each subject
    foreach(var subject in subjects)
    {
        // Yield it
        yield return subject;

        // Then yield all its decendants
        foreach (var decendant in SelectRecursive(selector(subject), selector))
            yield return decendant;
    }
}

It's not a general test though, as you need to expect it to happen, plus you can only check the frame count and not the actual size of the stack. It is also not possible to check whether another call will exceed stack space, all that you can do is roughly estimate how many calls in total will fit on your stack.

answered 2010-01-06T11:48:20.287

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