[Python-Dev] Proper tail recursion (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.peters at gmail.com
Fri Jul 16 02:30:33 CEST 2004

[Andrew Koenig]

Especially because if we allocate such objects in the same way as we allocate other objects, we no longer need to have an upper bound on the number of such objects that can exist at one time.

For that matter, perhaps we could make such objects explicitly accessible by user programs. If we did that, of course, we would not want to restrict such objects to the ones that correspond to tail calls--we might as well create them for all calls. We might even make it possible to "call" such an object, the effect of which would be to cause execution to continue from the state it was in when that object was created. Gee, once we do that, we don't need to keep that information around on the stack any more at all. I guess we need a catchy name for such objects. Because we can use them to make execution continue from an arbitrary point, how about calling such an object a "continuation?"

Every sufficiently advanced implementation of Python will indeed reinvent Stackless, but continuations are a "don't go there" topic even for long-suffering Christian now .

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