RangeError Maximum call stack size exceeded Why

Question

If I run   Array apply null  new Array 1000000   map Math random     on Chrome 33  I get     RangeError  Maximum call stack size exceeded   Why

User · Accepted Answer

Browsers can t handle that many arguments  See this snippet for example   alert apply window  new Array 1000000000      This yields RangeError  Maximum call stack size exceeded which is the same as in your problem   To solve that  do   var arr       for var i   0  i  lt  1000000  i         arr push Math random

User · Answer

You first need to understand Call Stack  Understanding Call stack will also give you clarity to how  function hierarchy and execution order  works in JavaScript Engine    The call stack is primarily used for function invocation  call   Since there is only one call stack  Hence  all function s  execution get pushed and popped one at a time  from top to bottom    It means the call stack is synchronous  When you enter a function  an entry for that function is pushed onto the Call stack and when you exit from the function  that same entry is popped from the Call Stack  So  basically if everything is running smooth  then at the very beginning and at the end  Call Stack will be found empty   Here is the illustration of Call Stack     Now  if you provide too many arguments or caught inside any unhandled recursive call  You will encounter      RangeError  Maximum call stack size exceeded   which is quite obvious as explained by others     Hope this helps

User · Answer

The answer with for is correct  but if you really want to use functional style avoiding for statement - you can use the following instead of your expression      Array from Array 1000000         Math random       The Array from   method creates a new Array instance from an array-like or iterable object  The second argument of this method is a map function to call on every element of the array   Following the same idea you can rewrite it using ES2015 Spread operator          Array 1000000   map       Math random      In both examples you can get an index of the iteration if you need  for example          Array 1000000   map     i     i   Math random

User · Answer

Here it fails at Array apply null  new Array 1000000   and not the  map call   All functions arguments must fit on callstack at least pointers of each argument   so in this they are too many arguments for the callstack   You need to the understand what is call stack   Stack is a LIFO data structure  which is like an array that only supports push and pop methods   Let me explain how it works by a simple example   function a var1  var2        var3   3      b 5  6       c var1  var2     function b var5  var6        c 7  8     function c var7  var8        When here function a is called  it will call b and c  When b and c are called  the local variables of a are not accessible there because of scoping roles of Javascript  but the Javascript engine must remember the local variables and arguments  so it will push them into the callstack  Let s say you are implementing a JavaScript engine with the Javascript language like Narcissus   We implement the callStack as array   var callStack        Everytime a function called we push the local variables into the stack   callStack push currentLocalVaraibles    Once the function call is finished like in a  we have called b  b is finished executing and we must return to a   we get back the local variables by poping the stack   currentLocalVaraibles   callStack pop     So when in a we want to call c again  push the local variables in the stack  Now as you know  compilers to be efficient define some limits  Here when you are doing Array apply null  new Array 1000000    your currentLocalVariables object will be huge because it will have 1000000 variables inside  Since  apply will pass each of the given array element as an argument to the function  Once pushed to the call stack this will exceed the memory limit of call stack and it will throw that error   Same error happens on infinite recursion function a     a      as too many times  stuff has been pushed to the call stack   Note that I m not a compiler engineer and this is just a simplified representation of what s going on  It really is more complex than this  Generally what is pushed to callstack is called stack frame which contains the arguments  local variables and the function address

[javascript] "RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded" Why?

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