Maximum function nesting 🐘 PHP

Fatal error: Maximum function nesting level of '256' reached, aborting!

Recursion went deeper than Xdebug’s max_nesting_level allows (or PHP crashed with a segfault without Xdebug).

Seen on: PHP

Meaning

The message comes from Xdebug. Without Xdebug, infinite recursion in PHP usually ends in a segmentation fault or memory exhaustion.

Common causes

  • Infinite recursion (missing base case)
  • Magic methods calling themselves (__get inside __get)
  • Legitimately deep recursion on big trees

⚡ Quick fix

  1. Find the repeating frames in the trace
  2. Fix the base case
  3. Raise xdebug.max_nesting_level only for legitimately deep recursion

Detailed fix by platform

PHP

  1. Convert deep recursion to an iterative loop with an explicit stack

How to diagnose

  1. Frames — Which function repeats?
  2. Base case — Is it ever reached?

🧠 Still stuck? Analyze your error

Paste the full message, response headers or stack trace — we'll detect the platform and point to the most likely cause.