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while the compilation does technically terminate it is doing so with a StackOverflowError which along with the resulting stack-trace most likely indicates a non-terminating recursion.

It only terminates due to a finite limit on the size of the stack.

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Stack depth limits avoid some non-termination by changing them into crashes. It is still a failure, of course, but a bit different and generally less troublesome than say, a tailcall eliminating recursion that actually spins for hours until a human notices and interrupts it.

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