On Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:42:17 +0100, Alexander Schmolck wrote: >> As for why tail calls are not optimized out, it was decided that being able >> to have the stack traces (with variable information, etc.) was more useful >> than offering tail call optimization > > I don't buy this.
Do you mean you don't believe the decision was made, or you don't agree with the decision? > What's more important, making code not fail arbitrarily (and > thus making approaches to certain problems feasible that otherwise > wouldn't be) or making it a be a bit easier to debug code that will fail > arbitrarily? Why not only do tail-call optimization in .pyo files and > get the best of both worlds? Are you volunteering? If you are, I'm sure your suggestion will be welcomed gratefully. >> (do what I say). > > Where did you say run out of memory and fail? More importantly how do > you say "don't run out of memory and fail"? If we can live with a certain amount of "arbitrary failures" in simple arithmetic, then the world won't end if tail recursion isn't optimized away by the compiler. You can always hand-optimize it yourself. dont_run_out_of_memory_and_fail = 10**(10**100) # please? -- Steven. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
