java.lang.reflect.Proxy: Huge exception stack trace

Question

Here is a simple Java application:

import java.lang.reflect.InvocationHandler;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import java.lang.reflect.Proxy;

public class Main {

    interface MyInterface {
        void myMethod();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        MyInterface myInterface = (MyInterface) Proxy.newProxyInstance(Main.class.getClassLoader(), new Class[] {MyInterface.class},
            new InvocationHandler() {
                @Override
                public Object invoke(Object proxy, Method method, Object[] args) throws Throwable {
                    return method.invoke(proxy, args);
                }
            });
        myInterface.myMethod();
    }
}

I would expect to get a simple StackOverflowError here, because I am recursively calling the same method on the proxy instance.

However, the stack trace produced by the exception contains millions of lines and hundreds of MBs in size.

The first part of the stack trace starts like this:

java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at $Proxy0.myMethod(Unknown Source)
    at Main.main(Main.java:22)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at Main$1.invoke(Main.java:18)
    ... 2 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at $Proxy0.myMethod(Unknown Source)
    ... 7 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at Main$1.invoke(Main.java:18)
    ... 8 more

and extends to:

Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at $Proxy0.myMethod(Unknown Source)
    ... 1022 more

Then follow millions of lines like:

Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor1.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at Main$1.invoke(Main.java:18)
    at $Proxy0.myMethod(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor1.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at Main$1.invoke(Main.java:18)
    .......

and:

Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at $Proxy0.myMethod(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor1.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at Main$1.invoke(Main.java:18)
    at $Proxy0.myMethod(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor1.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at Main$1.invoke(Main.java:18)
    .......

The last printed line is (after the repeating sequence above):

Exception: java.lang.StackOverflowError thrown from the UncaughtExceptionHandler in thread "main"

I suspected that stack trace generation mechanism was calling some methods on the proxy instance (maybe toString to print it, or something else), thus repeating the recursion over and over again (because each method call on the proxy leads to infinite recursion), but the total count of proxy method executions is 1919 (measured by incrementing a counter in the InvocationHandler.invoke method).

In my real use case I fixed the infinite recursion issue of course; I am just curious if anyone knows if this is some bug or there is a reasonable explanation?

Java version:

java version "1.8.0_65"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_65-b17)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.65-b01, mixed mode)

EDIT

@JiriTousek and @AndrewWilliamson kindly provided an analysis of what may be the cause for this. I implemented a simulation based on their input:

import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException;
import java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException;

public class Test {
    private static int counter = 0;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        proxy();
    }

    private static void proxy() {
        try {
            methodInvoke();
        } catch (Throwable e) {
            throw new UndeclaredThrowableException(e);
        }
    }

    private static void methodInvoke() throws InvocationTargetException {
        try {
            myMethod();
        } catch (Throwable e) {
            throw new InvocationTargetException(e);
        }
    }

    private static void myMethod() {
        if (counter++ == 5) {
            throw new StackOverflowError();
        }
        proxy();
    }
}

This results in the following stack trace:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:16)
    at Test.main(Test.java:9)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:24)
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:14)
    ... 1 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:16)
    at Test.myMethod(Test.java:32)
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:22)
    ... 2 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:24)
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:14)
    ... 4 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:16)
    at Test.myMethod(Test.java:32)
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:22)
    ... 5 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:24)
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:14)
    ... 7 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:16)
    at Test.myMethod(Test.java:32)
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:22)
    ... 8 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:24)
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:14)
    ... 10 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:16)
    at Test.myMethod(Test.java:32)
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:22)
    ... 11 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:24)
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:14)
    ... 13 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:16)
    at Test.myMethod(Test.java:32)
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:22)
    ... 14 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:24)
    at Test.proxy(Test.java:14)
    ... 16 more
Caused by: java.lang.StackOverflowError
    at Test.myMethod(Test.java:30)
    at Test.methodInvoke(Test.java:22)
    ... 17 more

So, there is no line numbers growth for each stack frame.

Answer 1

The printed stack trace is not truncated when depth of identical traces is longer than 1024 (default value). That's why the last truncated trace ends with ... 1022 more while all of the subsequent ones are printed fully.

The default can be changed by setting MaxJavaStackTraceDepth JVM argument to the desired value. When I increased it for the original example with Proxy by running it with -XX:MaxJavaStackTraceDepth=8192, the entire printed stack trace dropped to about 12500 lines, ending with:

Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor1.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at Main1$1.invoke(Main1.java:16)
    ... 7003 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.UndeclaredThrowableException
    at $Proxy0.myMethod(Unknown Source)
    ... 7007 more

Exception: java.lang.StackOverflowError thrown from the UncaughtExceptionHandler in thread "main"