[Python-Dev] Re: python-dev Summary for 2004-07-01 through 2004-07-15[draft] (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Fri Jul 23 09:45:17 CEST 2004

"Brett Cannon" <bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in message news:410095A1.2040002 at ocf.berkeley.edu...

You are not getting tail recursion

This strikes me as both misleading and potentially inflamatory. People remain free to use any form of recursion, including tail recursion. As I understand it, what Guido rejected was the automagic special case single-framing of tail recursive calls (for time and space saving). So what people are not getting is automatic tail recursion optimization (or elimination, though I consider that term less accurate).

It seems to me that this decision is consistent with the general policy of not doing code-rewriting optimatization. We also are 'not getting', for instance, automatic common-expression elimination or automatic strength reduction or automatic movement of constant expressions outside of loops. So I suggest something like

Automatic tail recursion optimization

In keeping with the general policy of not doing code-rewrite optimation in the compiler, Guido rejected this proposal. For more, read...

Terry J. Reedy

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