We routinely allow questions where the code works correctly for small inputs but fails to scale to larger inputs. The time-limit-exceeded and memory-optimization tags are often applied to such questions.
What if the problem is that the stack sometimes overflows? That seems to be the premise of this question.
To an extent, yes. In this particular case, no.
I don't see a problem with allowing questions that have Stack Overflow Exceptions, provided the code works acceptably on a smaller input set. If we were to eliminate questions with SOE, then by all rights we should eliminate time-limit-exceeded questions as well, simply because they "don't work as expected" for the very specific large input they are failing on.
A Stack Overflow Exception is just another variant of time-limit-exceeded. Except, instead of the time being exceeded, the actual amount of information on the stack has been exceeded. The only difference is the manner in which the error with the code is presented.
SOE questions can also help us all out: now we have a chance to point out potential optimizations that can lead to tail-call recursion which wouldn't overflow the stack, or reduce the memory footprint to reduce stack space, et. al. It gives all users a chance to learn how to prevent their own Stack Overflow Exceptions.
The reason I would say "no" to this question, is that the OP doesn't want a code review, but instead wants:
In some test cases it is giving StackOverflow Error. Could I please help me correct this code?
Were the question rephrased, it would be a fine fit. Were the OP to be looking for a general code review with the possibility that it would fix the SOE, then it would be fine. As it stands, the OP specifically wants a fix to the SOE.
If the code works for small inputs, then we can assume it would work for large inputs, were the SOE not present.
This question resolves around the bug he currently encounters. This is not a question asking for a review about any and all aspects of the code.
If a user posts a question on Code Review, we assume it's working to the best of the authors knowledge. Sometimes there's edge cases in which it is not. Sometimes the author is aware of those edge cases and mentions them. In that case we simply exclude those cases from the specification, making the rest by default 'working code'.
The code in this specific question is flawed. The author knows this. This is a Stack Overflow question, quite literally.
I would advice the author to read up on how to write a Minimum, Complete and Verifiable Example and post a question on aforementioned site.
The main difference between a Stack Overflow question and a time-limit-exceeded is the latter will still work. It might take half a year to complete, but it works. A question which overflows a stack as a major design flaw and will not work for the required input. Simply put, it's broken.
stack overflow question would run given a machine with a large enough stack.
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Aug 8, 2016 at 13:13
This has everything to do with what the question is about. If the question is about how to optimize a program to reduce memory consumption, it is fine. If the question is about trouble-shooting code that causes stack overflows, it belongs on the Stack Overflow site.
On desktop/hosted systems, stack overflow is almost always caused by either using ridiculously large local variables that should have been allocated on the heap, or by silly uses of recursion.
In such cases, SO has canonical duplicates that can be used to instantly close the question, those kind of questions have been asked thousand times before. Example.
On-topic examples:
Off-topic examples (belongs on SO):
my Comment really points out the issue here.
when you say The same code if written in C/C++ has passed all test cases. that makes me think that there is something different with garbage collection, maybe there is something that is different about Java that you don't have in C or C++ or maybe you have coded it correctly in C/C++ but incorrectly in Java. I would double check your code to make sure that it is doing the exact same thing as the code you wrote in C/C++
The code that was written for C and/or C++ works, but the code written in Java fails some of the test cases, because there is something different about the Java code it doesn't meet the requirements.
The purpose of the tests is to make sure that the code meets the requirements, and if the code fails to meet the requirements then it is not working the way it is supposed to, it is broken.
The same requirements were passed in the C/C++ code, I would say that the settings for the Stack and the Time Limit wouldn't change from one language to the next in terms of the challenge, so I think that this means there is a fault in the code itself, that the code isn't doing what it is supposed to do.
Stack Overflow Exception will break the application, where the time limit exceeded isn't truly an exception, it is breaking an arbitrary rule to the coding challenge that most likely won't break the application.
