thread exiting with uncaught exception: NO stack trace

Question

My application is causing a force close somewhere but instead of getting a FATAL EXCEPTION with the usual (and very informative) stack trace in my LogCat, I only receive only the following 4 lines:

06-27 07:08:54.546: D/dalvikvm(14351): GC_FOR_MALLOC freed 9923 objects / 657416 bytes in 21ms
06-27 07:08:54.769: W/dalvikvm(14351): threadid=20: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x4001d7f0)
06-27 07:08:54.796: W/dalvikvm(14351): threadid=21: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x4001d7f0)
06-27 07:08:54.796: I/Process(14351): Sending signal. PID: 14351 SIG: 9

This is in DEBUG mode with NO FILTERS applied on the LogCat!

• What could be causing this behavior?
• Is there a way to tell what's causing this exception?

Update: Thanks to @assylias below, I've been able to implement:

final UncaughtExceptionHandler subclass = Thread.currentThread().getUncaughtExceptionHandler();
Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(new Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler() {
    @Override
    public void uncaughtException(Thread paramThread, Throwable paramThrowable) {
    Log.getStackTraceString(paramThrowable);

    subclass.uncaughtException(paramThread, paramThrowable);
    }
});

Which produced these added lines:

06-27 08:24:47.105: D/dalvikvm(15475): GC_FOR_MALLOC freed 13865 objects / 1435952 bytes in 45ms
06-27 08:24:47.136: I/dalvikvm(15475): threadid=15: stack overflow on call to Ljava/lang/AbstractStringBuilder;.enlargeBuffer:VI
06-27 08:24:47.136: I/dalvikvm(15475):   method requires 28+20+20=68 bytes, fp is 0x45209338 (56 left)
06-27 08:24:47.140: I/dalvikvm(15475):   expanding stack end (0x45209300 to 0x45209000)
06-27 08:24:47.140: I/dalvikvm(15475): Shrank stack (to 0x45209300, curFrame is 0x4520937c)
06-27 08:24:47.159: I/dalvikvm(15475): threadid=16: stack overflow on call to Ljava/lang/AbstractStringBuilder;.enlargeBuffer:VI
06-27 08:24:47.159: I/dalvikvm(15475):   method requires 28+20+20=68 bytes, fp is 0x4520c338 (56 left)
06-27 08:24:47.167: I/dalvikvm(15475):   expanding stack end (0x4520c300 to 0x4520c000)
06-27 08:24:47.167: I/dalvikvm(15475): Shrank stack (to 0x4520c300, curFrame is 0x4520c37c)
06-27 08:24:47.175: I/dalvikvm(15475): threadid=17: stack overflow on call to Ljava/lang/AbstractStringBuilder;.enlargeBuffer:VI
06-27 08:24:47.175: I/dalvikvm(15475):   method requires 28+20+20=68 bytes, fp is 0x4520f338 (56 left)
06-27 08:24:47.175: I/dalvikvm(15475):   expanding stack end (0x4520f300 to 0x4520f000)
06-27 08:24:47.175: I/dalvikvm(15475): Shrank stack (to 0x4520f300, curFrame is 0x4520f37c)

This is certainly much more useful information, but now I'm struggling with the following:

• The application doesn't force-close now, despite the call to subclass.uncaughtException(). Why?
• What is the meaning of all those stack overflows? What could I be doing that's so taxing on my poor Android test device?
• How can I tell which part in my code causes this?

Update: Log.getStackTraceString(paramThrowable); wasn't actually printing anything. The extra print that I received was from the bogus subclass.uncaughtException(paramThread, paramThrowable); The right way of logging the full stack trace is by using Log.e(TAG, "uncaughtException", throwable).

The only question remaining now is how do I re-throw the exception? Just do a throw paramThrowable?

Answering my last question: Eclipse won't let me throw without surrounding with try/catch, which led me to understand that what I want is not a re-throw but a killProcess(). Problem solved.

Answer 1

You could set a default uncaught exception handler at the beginning of your app and log some data in there (example below is using a java logger but easy to transpose to Android):

private static void setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler() {
    try {
        Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(new Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler() {

            @Override
            public void uncaughtException(Thread t, Throwable e) {
                logger.error("Uncaught Exception detected in thread {}", t, e);
            }
        });
    } catch (SecurityException e) {
        logger.error("Could not set the Default Uncaught Exception Handler", e);
    }
}