"Steven D'Aprano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Are you saying that the recursion done by "serious" languages is a fake? > That it is actually implemented behind the scenes by iteration?
Although easy to confuse, we should separate expressive syntax, whether recursive or iterative, from computation implementation. (The expressive question would remain even if computation were replaced by a magic answer-oracle.) What you call iterative implementation can also be called within-frame recursion. The function parameters are bound to new values or objects and control jumps to the first line of code. The only thing 'fake' about this as a function call is the reuse of the same execution frame instead of allocation a new frame when a new frame is not needed. Terry J. Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
