DOCBOOK-APPS: Saxon crashing: java.lang.StackOverflowError

[Jeff Beal <jeff dot beal at ansys dot com>]

On Friday, Saxon suddenly began crashing with a
"java.lang.StackOverflowError".  I've been using the configuration I have
now for at least six months, with no such problem.  I've been looking
through CVS at the source changes we made, and the only significant change I
can find is that I went through with a script and changed a bunch of
hard-coded <ulink/>s into <link/>s.  (By 'a bunch' I mean 15,000.)  XSLTProc
was also crashing after the change.  Can anybody think of any reason why
there would be an upper limit on the number of possible <link/> elements?
In particular, can anybody think of how the stylesheets would throw XSL
processors into an infinite loop this way?   (The javadoc for
java.lang.StackOverflowError reads "Thrown when a stack overflow occurs
because an application recurses too deeply".)

I am still using the 1.48 stylesheets, but the 1.58.1 stylesheets don't show
this problem.  (Upgrading stylesheets right now is not a particularly
attractive alternative to me -- but I am planning to do so in the relatively
near future if they fix more problems than they cause.)

Jeff Beal
Tools Specialist
ANSYS, Inc.
(724) 514-3150