[CLJ-444] Infinite recursion in Keyword.intern leads to stack overflow

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:30:00 -0500

Keyword.intern keeps a table of SoftReferences to keywords, always preferring the existing one to making a new one. However, if the SoftReference has been pulled, the code tries to recurse as its way of "trying again."

Unfortunately, the way the logic is written, the code will work exactly the same way the second time around (and the third... it's turtles all the way down the stack) and eventually have a stack overflow.

I found this in a long running web service that was using XML RPC and then "keywordizing" the keys of the result maps. Within an hour or so, it would blow up on this. From my read of the code, there is no work around once you're in this state since the expired reference is stuck in the keyword table.

Patch coming momentarily.

Clojure JIRA

[CLJ-444] Infinite recursion in Keyword.intern leads to stack overflow