Re: tail recursion

[Warren Harris <harris@hplwhh.hpl.hp.com>]

There's a lot of talk about how tail-recursion affects resource utilization.
What about how it affects the programming environment?  Certainly whether an
implementation performs tail-recursion elimination or not is visible in the
debugging process (e.g. in a backtrace).  It's presence may make debugging more
difficult because intermediate stack frames may be eliminated.  I think this
aspect is just as important as whether the machine runs out of stack space or
not.  They're both properties of the implementation.

Warren