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





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list