Someone on SO reported a surprising behavior where a recursive implementation of `gcd` turned out faster than the iterative version: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/42792988/ The more surprising thing is that when I try it I get the opposite result, even though it's basically on the same kind of system (GNU/Linx x86). I'm curious where the difference might come from. Could you guys try out the test? Just do `emacs -Q --batch -l .../ir-test.el`. Here's what I got: % emacs24 -Q --batch -l ~/tmp/ir-test.el Interpreted: Iterative=1.770s; Recursive=1.937s Bytecompiled: Iterative=1.187s; Recursive=1.496s % .../src/emacs -Q --batch -l ~/tmp/ir-test.el Interpreted: Iterative=4.496s; Recursive=4.595s Bytecompiled: Iterative=2.471s; Recursive=2.983s where `emacs24` is Debian's whereas the other one is my locally built&hacked version with debugging assertions and stuff. Stefan