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

Andrew Koenig ark-mlist at att.net
Fri Jul 16 16:15:22 CEST 2004

> My dig was at the Schemers who would rather implement an array as a > linked list and then optimize tail-recursion in the hope of getting > some performance back -- in vain because they still can't get O(1) > indexing.

In all fairness, a serious Schemer would probabliy use the builtin vector type for an array rather than cons cells.

People who insist on using linked lists when they want fast random-access indexing are weird. But my experience is that random-access indexing isn't nearly as useful as people seem to think it is, and that many people use arrays as pure sequences. Not all the time, of course, but often.

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