On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 11:57 PM, Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> wrote: > Ian Kelly <ian.g.ke...@gmail.com>: > >> On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 11:25 PM, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> (Also, side point: Python can't actually optimize the above function, >>> because it actually means "call quicksort, then discard its return >>> value and return None". A true tail call has to return the result of >>> the recursive call, and Python lacks a way to say "this function will >>> always return None". But that's trivial.) >> >> Another point in favor of an explicit tail-call keyword. Then one >> couldn't make that mistake. > > How about "return"?
I think you miss my point entirely. "return" doesn't mean tail-call optimize; it just means to return the result. This is what led to the confusion responsible for the bug that Chris pointed out in the first place. With a keyword that explicitly means "perform tail-call optimization *and* return", the association of the keyword with the optimization is much clearer, and the programmer is much less likely to mistakenly omit it. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
