Smalltalk Program running out of memory; pass by reference issue?

Question

So I'm working on a program which is supposed to 'heapify' integers that a user adds to a set, among other things. I'm having a problem right now, however, when I try to access the left child node of a Node which was passed as a parameter to a function. Visual Works runs out of memory...

The odd thing is that in the debugger, I can see that the Left child node of the passed node was created and assigned to the passed node correctly. But when I try to access it via the source code, I get a crazy memory error.

Here is the corresponding code. Hopefully it is readable

The function in which the error occurs, once it is called:

addLeftChildTo: aNode

"Determine Left child of passed node. Set that child's parent node as self. Imprint the index where that value was retrieved from the array."

| temp leftChildIndex |
2 * aNode indexOfNode <= arrayOfInput size
    ifTrue: 
        [leftChildIndex := 2 * aNode indexOfNode.
        aNode left: (arrayOfInput at: leftChildIndex).
        aNode left parentNode: aNode.                   <---VW Runs out of memory and crashes here. This occurs once the debugger dives into the 'left' accessor method of the passed aNode object.
        aNode left indexOfNode: leftChildIndex.
        self bubbleUp: aNode left.
        self bubbleUpArrayOfInput: aNode left]
    ifFalse: [aNode left: nil]

Here are the accessor methods of 'left' for the BinaryHeapNode class

left

    ^self left

left: aValue

    left := BinaryHeapNode new: aValue.

And in case it's helpful to see the code that originally calls the addLeftChildTo: method...

populateHeap
"from passed array of input"
"Add a node (typically a node with an element from the ArrayOfInput) to the heap. Bubble up as you go."

| temp |
rootNode isNil
    ifTrue: 
        [rootNode := BinaryHeapNode new: (arrayOfInput at: 1).
        rootNode indexOfNode: indexOfArray.

        self addLeftChildTo: rootNode.   <--- Call to function with problematic code. 
                    ...

I don't understand what I'm doing wrong and I've been stuck on this problem for a couple of hours. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You made an infinite recursion with accessor #left:

left
  ^self left

This method actually calls itself. Return just instance variable ^left instead.