Re: tail-call elimination

[Daniel Colascione <dancol@dancol.org>]

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On 12/10/2012 6:57 PM, Chris Gray wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have attached a patch that implements tail-call elimination for a subset of
> emacs lisp.  This will be helpful in allowing coding styles which emphasize tail
> recursion, such as is usual in languages like Scheme. 

Your patch eliminates tail calls only in byte compiled code. Until the
interpreter also supports guaranteed tail call elimination or we byte-compile
all forms before evaluating them, elisp developers cannot rely on the
optimization and cannot write idiomatic tail recursive code. As a purely
opportunistic optimization, not as a guaranteed language feature, I doubt tail
call elimination is worth the complexity.

I also don't particularly like code that relies on tail call elimination. I find
it difficult to read, and as you note, the results can be surprising.


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