How to increase the Java stack size?

Question

I asked this question to get to know how to increase the runtime call stack size in the JVM. I\'ve got an answer to this, and I\'ve also got many useful answers and comments

Answer 1

I did Anagram excersize, which is like Count Change problem but with 50 000 denominations (coins). I am not sure that it can be done iteratively, I do not care. I just know that the -xss option had no effect -- I always failed after 1024 stack frames (might be scala does bad job delivering to to java or printStackTrace limitation. I do not know). This is bad option, as explained anyway. You do not want all threads in to app to be monstrous. However, I did some experiments with new Thread (stack size). This works indeed,

  def measureStackDepth(ss: Long): Long = {
    var depth: Long = 0
      val thread: Thread = new Thread(null, new Runnable() {
        override def run() {
          try {
          def sum(n: Long): Long = {depth += 1; if (n== 0) 0 else sum(n-1) + 1}
          println("fact = " + sum(ss * 10))
          } catch {
            case e: StackOverflowError => // eat the exception, that is expected
          }
        }
      }, "deep stack for money exchange", ss)
      thread.start()
      thread.join()
    depth
  }                                               //> measureStackDepth: (ss: Long)Long


  for (ss <- (0 to 10)) println("ss = 10^" +  ss + " allows stack of size " -> measureStackDepth((scala.math.pow (10, ss)).toLong) )
                                                  //> fact = 10
                                                  //| (ss = 10^0 allows stack of size ,11)
                                                  //| fact = 100
                                                  //| (ss = 10^1 allows stack of size ,101)
                                                  //| fact = 1000
                                                  //| (ss = 10^2 allows stack of size ,1001)
                                                  //| fact = 10000
                                                  //| (ss = 10^3 allows stack of size ,10001)
                                                  //| (ss = 10^4 allows stack of size ,1336)
                                                  //| (ss = 10^5 allows stack of size ,5456)
                                                  //| (ss = 10^6 allows stack of size ,62736)
                                                  //| (ss = 10^7 allows stack of size ,623876)
                                                  //| (ss = 10^8 allows stack of size ,6247732)
                                                  //| (ss = 10^9 allows stack of size ,62498160)

You see that stack can grow exponentially deeper with exponentially more stack alloted to the thread.