Why am I getting a Stack underflow (error 1024) in release build?

Question

I had this strange problem with stack underflow errors happen only in the release build of Flex Builder project. I looked around the web to find a solution, but while I found some related posts, nothing really helped my out. So here is this question and my solution in the answers so that it may hopefully help other people.

The Problem: I ported a java program (a game) to flex and it works fine in debug mode on Android, the web and Playbook. However, when I build a release version of the game, it crashes. The error reported is 1024, i.e. stack underflow, according to Adobe's documentation.

At first, I thought the problem was limited only to the Playbook, but no, the exact same problem happens at the exact same place on the web browser and Android. From the debugging information I inserted, I discovered that the exception appears to be thrown during the call to another function.

Answer 1

To solve the problem, I broke down the offending function in many individual functions and so narrowed down which precise part of the code what causing problem. This lead me to a few lines of code that had the following call (in a try-catch):

trace(e.getStackTrace())()

Hummm, this apparently was produced by the regex I used to refactor from Java to Actionscript. Removing the extra () solve the problem.

This is the kind of things I wished the compiler would catch instead of letting it fail only at release, when the function containing the offending code is pushed on the stack.