Try-finally block prevents StackOverflowError

Question

Take a look at the following two methods:

public static void foo() {
    try {
        foo();
    } finally {
        foo();
    }
}

public static void bar(         


        

Answer 1

The program merely seems to run forever; it actually terminates, but it takes exponentially more time the more stack space you have. To prove that it finishes, I wrote a program that first depletes most of the available stack space, and then calls foo, and finally writes a trace of what happened:

foo 1
  foo 2
    foo 3
    Finally 3
  Finally 2
    foo 3
    Finally 3
Finally 1
  foo 2
    foo 3
    Finally 3
  Finally 2
    foo 3
    Finally 3
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StackOverflowError
    at Main.foo(Main.java:39)
    at Main.foo(Main.java:45)
    at Main.foo(Main.java:45)
    at Main.foo(Main.java:45)
    at Main.consumeAlmostAllStack(Main.java:26)
    at Main.consumeAlmostAllStack(Main.java:21)
    at Main.consumeAlmostAllStack(Main.java:21)
    ...

The code:

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collections;
public class Main {
  static int[] orderOfOperations = new int[2048];
  static int operationsCount = 0;
  static StackOverflowError fooKiller;
  static Error wontReachHere = new Error("Won't reach here");
  static RuntimeException done = new RuntimeException();
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
      consumeAlmostAllStack();
    } catch (RuntimeException e) {
      if (e != done) throw wontReachHere;
      printResults();
      throw fooKiller;
    }
    throw wontReachHere;
  }
  public static int consumeAlmostAllStack() {
    try {
      int stackDepthRemaining = consumeAlmostAllStack();
      if (stackDepthRemaining < 9) {
        return stackDepthRemaining + 1;
      } else {
        try {
          foo(1);
          throw wontReachHere;
        } catch (StackOverflowError e) {
          fooKiller = e;
          throw done; //not enough stack space to construct a new exception
        }
      }
    } catch (StackOverflowError e) {
      return 0;
    }
  }
  public static void foo(int depth) {
    //System.out.println("foo " + depth); Not enough stack space to do this...
    orderOfOperations[operationsCount++] = depth;
    try {
      foo(depth + 1);
    } finally {
      //System.out.println("Finally " + depth);
      orderOfOperations[operationsCount++] = -depth;
      foo(depth + 1);
    }
    throw wontReachHere;
  }
  public static String indent(int depth) {
    return String.join("", Collections.nCopies(depth, "  "));
  }
  public static void printResults() {
    Arrays.stream(orderOfOperations, 0, operationsCount).forEach(depth -> {
      if (depth > 0) {
        System.out.println(indent(depth - 1) + "foo " + depth);
      } else {
        System.out.println(indent(-depth - 1) + "Finally " + -depth);
      }
    });
  }
}

You can try it online! (Some runs might call foo more or fewer times than others)