From: Michael Edgar <adgar@...>
Date: 2011-04-19T12:12:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Tail Call Optimization (Tail Recursion)

On Apr 18, 2011, at 10:51 PM, Vincent Manis wrote:

> In reality, the more useful benefit of TCO comes when it's not a recursive procedure, but simply invoking another method, and thus using less stack. That leads, for example, to a very nice and clean way of writing state machines, for example. 

This is the most compelling argument for me, especially regarding Ruby: modern
Ruby approaches emphasize heavy refactoring to small methods, and since nearly
everything else you do is a method call, I'm willing to bet TCO could kick in a fair
amount in the tail of those small methods. It might add up. But that's just my gut
instinct; I've never toyed with the TCO options.

Michael Edgar
adgar@carboni.ca
http://carboni.ca/