What happens in a program if the stack memory is exhausted and an exception occurs?

When the stack memory in a Java program is exhausted (stack overflow), the exception StackOverflowError usually occurs. This happens when the depth of method calls becomes too large, for example, due to infinite recursion.

What happens:

• The JVM tries to allocate memory for a new call frame on the stack.
• If there is no free space, a StackOverflowError is thrown.
• This is a runtime error that is not a checked exception, so it does not need to be explicitly handled.

Example of infinite recursion causing StackOverflowError:

public class StackOverflowExample {
    public void recursive() {
        recursive(); // infinite call
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new StackOverflowExample().recursive();
    }
}

When a StackOverflowError occurs, the program usually terminates abruptly if the error is not caught. It is important to avoid too deep recursion and to control stack usage.