On Wednesday 14 September 2005 02:23 pm, Paul Rubin wrote: > Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > It is a "mere implementation detail" that (for most computer systems, and > > most programming languages) stack space is at a premium and a deeply > > recursive function can run out of stack space while the heap still has > > lots of free memory. > > Every serious FP language implementation optimizes tail calls and thus > using recursion instead of iteration doesn't cost any stack space and > it probably generates the exact same machine code.
I understood both the iterative version (which was efficient) and the "naive" recursive version MUCH better than the "efficient" recursive version. Being able to write the efficient recursive version proves you're smart, which is very important to some people. Being able to write the efficient iterative version proves you don't have to be. Since I write code to solve problems, not prove my intellectual prowess, my vote goes for the "dumb" solution. Probably this is why I use Python. Sorry. ;-) -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
