Infinite Recursive Loop
ID |
java.infinite_recursive_loop |
Severity |
low |
Remediation Complexity |
trivial |
Remediation Risk |
low |
Remediation Effort |
low |
Resource |
Reliability |
Language |
Java |
Tags |
CWE:674, reliability |
Description
Reports methods that call themselves unconditionally, leading to infinite recursion and a guaranteed StackOverflowError.
Rationale
A recursive method without a base case will call itself indefinitely until the JVM runs out of stack space. This is always a bug.
// Bad -- no base case
public int factorial(int n) {
return n * factorial(n - 1);
}Remediation
Add a base case that terminates the recursion.
public int factorial(int n) {
if (n <= 1) return 1;
return n * factorial(n - 1);
}