On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:51:07 -0700, Steve Howell wrote: > > --- "Anders J. Munch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> Converting tail-recursion to iteration is trivial, >> and perfectly reasonable for >> a human to do by hand. You add an outer "while >> True"-loop, the recursive call >> becomes a tuple assignment, and other code paths end >> with a break out of the >> loop. Completely mechanical and the resulting code >> doesn't even look that bad. >> > > I have to ask the stupid question. If a human can do > this completely mechanically, why can't a machine?
They can and do -- some compilers optimize tail-recursion into iteration. Python doesn't, as a deliberate design decision, because to do so would lose traceback information. -- Steven. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
