Re: RFC: major change to argument processing.

[Rob Browning]

Marius Vollmer <address@hidden> writes:

> If your algorithm makes use of a stack-like data-structure, you can
> just as well use the call stack for it.  Like tree-walking: you have
> to code your own stack if you want to avoid recursion.  Unlike
> computing the factorial: the algorithm does not need a stack, and
> coding it recursively (which might seem natural at first) will use
> space linear with the argument, while the iterative version
> (i.e. tail-recursing) runs in constant space.

Agreed.

> In our case, consing up a list, we already need space linear with
> the number of recursions (or iterations), so we can only gain a
> constant factor when not using the stack.  Sometimes this is worth
> it, sometimes not.

Makes sense.

Thanks

-- 
Rob Browning <address@hidden> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930