Stack Overflow Exceptions

[Alex_Castro]

I am getting a Stack Overflow exceptions in my Managed COBOL project. I read an article regarding this problem on the Micro Focus Community forum at the following link: https://community.microfocus.com/t5/Visual-COBOL-Knowledge-Base/Diagnose-and-fix-Stack-Overflow-exceptions-in-Visual-COBOL/ta-p/1743761#

I experienced this problem a couple of weeks ago and manage to circumvent it by changing the code. But I am getting it again and it is happening in complex nested code that I cannot easily change.

Based on the articles, it seems all that may be required is that I increase the stack size allocation. These are the following steps a tried as instructed by the article in order to increase stack space:
1) Enable mixed-mode debugging in the project property
2) Attempted to do a stack analysis using the “.load sos” extension but it did not recognize the “.load sos” command.


I am using Micro Focus VISUAL COBOL 5.0  with patch update 10 and Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2019 Version 16.6.2 S.

[Simon Ellis · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex, unfortunately the SoS debugger extension is not supported in recent versions of Visual Studio. It will still be supported in WinDBG so you could use that as an alternative.

[Alex_Castro]

I solved this problem by adding ‘ILSTACKSIZE(99097152)’ in the ‘ Additional directives’ under Project/Properties/COBOL. What this did is essentially increased the stack space. The original articles I included in this thread suggested this as a possible solution but I somehow missed it. I re-read the article again and that is when I notice that I had not tried this solution.