From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@...>
Date: 2005-12-17T15:29:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby tail recursion

Neil Stevens wrote:
> 
> Good point.  Tail-call recursion is just a form of recursion that's easy
> to turn into iteration, but (at least to me) one of ruby's strengths is
> its iterators, so one might as well just write code in iterative form
> instead of tail-call recursive form!
> 

Well, my take is this. If you happen to write recursive code, and it
happens to be tail-call optimizable, the interpreter should be smart
enough not to let the stack grow unnecessarily. That's a fairly easy
fix if I understand rightly.

That's a separate issue from whether that style is necessarily the
best in a given situation.


Hal