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Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2015 03:52:58 +1000
Subject: Re: Possibly Pythonic Tail Call Optimization (TCO/TRE)
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:93826

On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 3:43 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> wrote:
> I don't like the way integer overflows are explicitly undefined in
> modern C.
>
> Similarly, I don't like the way tail call behavior is undefined in
> Python.

Where in the Python spec is it stated that tail call behaviour is
undefined? The behaviour of the 'return' statement is well defined: it
evaluates its expression (or None), *then* removes the top of the call
stack and passes control back to the caller:

https://docs.python.org/3/reference/simple_stmts.html#the-return-statement

This implies that during the evaluation of its expression, the current
function's call stack entry is still present. Tail call behaviour is
therefore well defined: it is identical to any other expression
evaluation, and then the final result is passed back to the caller.

ChrisA