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

Josiah Carlson jcarlson at uci.edu
Fri Jul 16 20:23:46 CEST 2004

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:03:25 -0400, "Phillip J. Eby" <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:

At 10:45 AM 7/16/04 -0700, Josiah Carlson wrote: >IMO it shouldn't be only about tail-call optimizations. Andrew Koenig >suggested that frames be allocated from the heap, which if it is >possible (is there anything that gets executed directly by the processor >so we have to worry about processors supporting NX?), seems to remove >the C stack limit.

Frames are allocated on the heap. That's not the problem. The problem is that the interpreter has to use the C stack to call C functions, and Python objects are implemented using C functions. Therefore, invoking operations on Python objects uses the C stack, in the general case.

Ahh, now I understand. Thank you for the clarification. I'll go back to lurking now.

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