Iterators? (Was: Squeak practical use? ...)
Jimmie Houchin
jhouchin at texoma.net
Wed Jan 30 19:33:41 UTC 2002
Would it be reasonable to implement it in such a way that tail recursion
could be explicitly requested by the programmer? The default would
remain as it is and tail recursion could be an optimizing option.
Just a thought.
Jimmie Houchin
Jesse Welton wrote:
[snip recursion discussion]
> I remember this being discussed here on the list some time back. It
> sounded like it would not be difficult to change the system to enable
> tail recursion optimization, though I don't recall whether a compiler
> change would be sufficient, or a VM change would be necessary in the
> general case. (I think a compiler change is sufficient, at least, for
> self-recursive methods, but possibly not for mutual recusion.) As to
> whether it would be a good idea, the consensus seemed to be that it
> would interfere too much with the debugger's strengths. (Tail
> recursion optimization effectively erases all record of intermediate
> calls, making it much harder (or impossible) to back-trace the
> execution of a running program.)
>
> -Jesse
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