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Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons

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Op Tuesday 5 May 2015 17:47 CEST schreef Paul Moore:

> On Sunday, 3 May 2015 16:23:59 UTC+1, Cecil Westerhof  wrote:
>>> By the way: I think that even if the recursion does not go further
>>> as 500, it is still a good idea to use tail recursion. Why use
>>> stack space when it is not necessary?
>>
>> I pushed the example to GitHub:
>> https://github.com/CecilWesterhof/PythonLibrary/blob/master/mathDecebal.py
>
> You already know this, as your code shows, but tail call recursion
> elimination is only possible when you have a *direct* tail call (one
> with the result of the tail call returned immediately to the
> caller). Even the standard trivial factorial example doesn't have a
> direct tail call, without rewriting to use an accumulator variable.
> Which is a non-intuitive transformation to anyone who's not familiar
> with recursive functional languages and their idioms.
>
> If you're rewriting your recursive function *anyway*, it's not that
> much harder in many (most?) cases to rewrite it iteratively.
>
> An example of a function that naturally uses direct tail call
> recursion, but which doesn't have a simple iterative rewrite, would
> be more compelling. Not particularly compelling (to me, anyway) even
> so, but still better than factorial or fibonnaci examples.

Well, I did not write many tail recursive functions. But what surprised
me was that for large values the ‘tail recursive’ version was more
efficient as the iterative version. And that was with myself
implementing the tail recursion. I expect the code to be more
efficient when the compiler implements the tail recursion.

-- 
Cecil Westerhof
Senior Software Engineer
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilwesterhof

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Throw the cat among the pigeons Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-05-02 16:20 +0200
  Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-05-03 17:12 +0200
    Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Paul  Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com> - 2015-05-05 08:47 -0700
      Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-05-05 18:18 +0200
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2015-05-05 14:45 -0400
          Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-05-05 21:42 +0200
            Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-05-06 12:57 +1000
              Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-05-06 14:03 +1000
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2015-05-05 14:30 -0600
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2015-05-05 16:46 -0400
          Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> - 2015-05-05 23:12 +0200
            Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2015-05-05 19:22 -0400
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2015-05-05 17:00 -0400
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2015-05-05 15:23 -0600
          Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-05-06 11:27 +1000
            Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2015-05-05 23:58 -0600
              Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-05-06 17:08 +1000
                Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2015-05-06 10:17 -0600
                Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2015-05-06 21:23 +0100
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2015-05-05 15:39 -0600
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2015-05-05 17:55 -0400
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-05-06 12:19 +1000
  Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-05-06 14:05 +1000
    Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-05-06 16:26 +1000
      Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2015-05-06 09:12 -0400
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Dan Sommers <dan@tombstonezero.net> - 2015-05-07 03:16 +0000
      Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-05-06 23:55 +1000
      Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2015-05-06 10:22 -0400
      Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-05-06 08:12 -0700
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Alain Ketterlin <alain@universite-de-strasbourg.fr.invalid> - 2015-05-06 17:36 +0200
          Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2015-05-06 16:23 -0400
            Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Alain Ketterlin <alain@universite-de-strasbourg.fr.invalid> - 2015-05-07 11:14 +0200
              Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-05-07 19:38 +1000
        Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2015-05-06 09:47 -0600
          Re: Throw the cat among the pigeons Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-05-06 10:24 -0700

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