"Stack overflow in line 0" on Internet Explorer

Question

I realise this is not the ideal place to ask about this in terms of searchability, but I've got a page whose JavaScript code throws "Stack overflow in line 0" errors when I look at it in Internet Explorer.

The problem is quite clearly not in line 0, but somewhere in the list of stuff that I'm writing to the document. Everything works fine in Firefox, so I don't have the delights of Firebug and friends to assist in troubleshooting.

Are there any standard causes for this? I'm guessing this is probably an Internet Explorer 7 bug or something quite obscure, and my Google-fu is bringing me little joy currently. I can find lots of people who have run into this before, but I can't seem to find how they solved it.

It's a really common and generic error message- it can show up for a whole lot of reasons and it totally doesn't explain itself. If it said "infinite loop" or something it would be a lot easier to work out what the cause is. — glenatron, Dec 24 '09 at 10:32
sometimes i cant understand why suddenly one question gets all the attention...damn :) or :( — Suraj Chandran, May 24 '11 at 17:44
I'm pretty sure the attention is because it is a very common and not in the least bit self-explanatory error message... — glenatron, Oct 18 '11 at 21:48

score 32 · Answer 1 · edited May 30 '12 at 11:08

32

I ran into this problem recently and wrote up a post about the particular case in our code that was causing this problem.

http://cappuccino.org/discuss/2010/03/01/internet-explorer-global-variables-and-stack-overflows/

The quick summary is: recursion that passes through the host global object is limited to a stack depth of 13. In other words, if the reference your function call is using (not necessarily the function itself) was defined with some form window.foo = function, then recursing through foo is limited to a depth of 13.

edited May 30 '12 at 11:08

Mike Kormendy

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answered Mar 02 '10 at 18:02

Ross Boucher

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1

Very interesting insight into the roots of the problem. – glenatron Mar 03 '10 at 11:38

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited May 24 '11 at 17:32

20

Aha!

I had an OnError() event in some code that was setting the image source to a default image path if it wasn't found. Of course, if the default image path wasn't found it would trigger the error handler...

For people who have a similar problem but not the same, I guess the cause of this is most likely to be either an unterminated loop, an event handler that triggers itself or something similar that throws the JavaScript engine into a spin.

edited May 24 '11 at 17:32

Peter Mortensen

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answered Oct 22 '08 at 15:56

glenatron

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this was somewhat similar to my problem. i'm not sure how the "recursion" happened, but i had a missing resource (empty.html) used in some iframe, and the empty.html was missing in one of my deployments. i checked my access log based on this answer, found the 404 and added the missing file. voila! – dmansfield Jul 31 '12 at 19:28

score 17 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 30 '15 at 07:12

17

You can turn off the "Disable Script Debugging" option inside of Internet Explorer and start debugging with Visual Studio if you happen to have that around.

I've found that it is one of few ways to diagnose some of those IE specific issues.

edited Nov 30 '15 at 07:12

hud

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answered Oct 22 '08 at 14:57

Mitchel Sellers

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score 7 · Answer 4 · edited May 24 '11 at 17:33

7

I had this problem, and I solved it. There was an attribute in the <%@ Page tag named MaintainScrollPositionOnPostback and after removing it, the error disapeared. I added it before to prevent scrolling after each postback.

edited May 24 '11 at 17:33

Peter Mortensen

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answered Dec 01 '09 at 12:56

massoud

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Thanks, that was my problem too. – Marcelo Jun 15 '11 at 14:23

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 02 '12 at 15:40

3

If you came here because you had the problem inside your selenium tests: IE doesn't like By.id("xyz"). Use By.name, xpath, or whatever instead.

answered Mar 02 '12 at 15:40

devsnd

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score 2 · Answer 6 · answered May 13 '10 at 17:33

2

Also having smartNavigation="true" causes this"

answered May 13 '10 at 17:33

CDev

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score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 04 '12 at 19:17

2

I set up a default project and found out the following:

The problem is the combination of smartNavigation and maintainScrollPositionOnPostBack. The error only occurs when both are set to true.

In my case, the error was produced by:

<pages smartNavigation="true" maintainScrollPositionOnPostBack="true" />

Any other combination works fine.

Can anybody confirm this?

answered Feb 04 '12 at 19:17

Tillito

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smartNavigation is deprecated, so you should use maintainScrollPositionOnPostBack only. This solved the problem for me. – Tillito Feb 04 '12 at 19:25
My users suddenly started receiving this error after I added these attributes to the pages tag, but only when using IE, so I did not experience the problem myself. Not having any clue to link the two together, I was completely lost for a solution until I found this answer. – kad81 May 11 '12 at 06:45

Muhd · Answer 8 · 2013-01-22T00:45:55.463

1

My was "at line 1" instead but...

I got this problem when using jQuery's .clone method. I replaced these by using making jQuery objects from the html string: $($(selector).html()).

edited Jan 22 '13 at 00:45

answered Jan 22 '13 at 00:39

Muhd

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Could you have been cloning an element that included the code that called `clone`? That would have that effect I reckon. – glenatron Jan 22 '13 at 09:59

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 25 '13 at 10:01

1

I have reproduced the same error on IE8. One of the text boxes has some event handlers to replace not valid data.

$('.numbersonly').on("keyup input propertychange", function () {
    //code
});

The error message was shown on entering data to this text box. We removed event "propertychange" from the code above and now it works correctly.

P.S. maybe it will help somebody

answered Oct 25 '13 at 10:01

Max

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Like most of the examples here, this is almost certainly a recursive loop- if your `propertychange` event changes a property of the element, it would trigger itself again, causing exactly this type of exception. – glenatron Oct 25 '13 at 10:09

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Dec 10 '10 at 18:12

1

Internet Options
Tools
Internet options
Advanced
Navigation section
Click > Disable script debugging

display a notification about every script error
sign in
You will smile !

answered Dec 10 '10 at 18:12

Janaka senatilleke

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Isn't this just treating the symptom? – Peter Mortensen May 24 '11 at 17:43
1

and treating the symptom only for one patient, where as possibly millions of them are not getting the treatment. – Kemal Dağ Feb 14 '13 at 16:56

lord_t · Answer 11 · 2012-12-20T19:54:02.283

0

In my case I had two functions a() and b(). First was calling second and second was calling first one:

var i = 0;
function a() { b(); }
function b() {
  i++; 
  if (i < 30) {
    a();
  }
}

a();

I resolved this using setTimeout:

var i = 0;
function a() { b(); }
function b() {
  i++; 
  if (i < 30) {
    setTimeout( function() {
      a();
    }, 0);
  }
}

a();

edited Dec 20 '12 at 19:54

answered Dec 20 '12 at 19:48

lord_t

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score 0 · Answer 12 · edited May 24 '11 at 17:35

0

I don't know what to tell you, but the same problem occured with jQuery table sorting and SEARCH. When there is nothing left in the table, where you are searching a string for example, you get this error too. Even in Google Analytics this error occurs often.

edited May 24 '11 at 17:35

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jan 27 '10 at 06:04

FasoService

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The cause of the error is typically an unterminated loop or recursive call that just overloads the Javascript engine, but that can happen in a whole lot of different ways. – glenatron Jan 27 '10 at 10:35

score -16 · Answer 13 · edited Jun 19 '12 at 00:34

-16

This is problem with Java and Flash Player. Install the latest Java and Flash Player, and the problem will be resolved. If not, then install Mozilla Firefox, it will auto install the updates required.

edited Jun 19 '12 at 00:34

Anish Gupta

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answered Aug 10 '10 at 14:09

Manisha

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Java*script*, not Java. And what's flash got to do with anything? – Cinder Feb 23 '13 at 18:28

"Stack overflow in line 0" on Internet Explorer

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