Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Tim Rentsch
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: why is there not a ipow version of pow?
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:25:36 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <86a4qh1t2n.fsf@linuxsc.com>
References: <115eks4$3pn1s$1@dont-email.me> <115facm$1659$3@dont-email.me> <115favq$2ckl$1@raubtier-asyl.eternal-september.org> <115fe3u$1659$5@dont-email.me> <115feje$3nf1$1@raubtier-asyl.eternal-september.org> <115ffag$1659$9@dont-email.me> <115g94d$2pb62$1@paganini.bofh.team> <115h9mb$kpdk$1@dont-email.me> <115hjka$o7k2$1@kst.eternal-september.org> <20260812224333.000065c4@yahoo.com> <115im0c$136js$1@kst.eternal-september.org> <20260813002409.00003f1d@yahoo.com> <115ippl$15jbt$1@dont-email.me> <86lda740ix.fsf@linuxsc.com> <20260815231716.00002b94@yahoo.com> <868q643ccm.fsf@linuxsc.com> <20260818003501.00002080@yahoo.com> <86zeyj1lrw.fsf@linuxsc.com> <20260818221740.00002511@yahoo.com> <86v797124x.fsf@linuxsc.com> <20260819215556.000030ed@yahoo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Injection-Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2026 01:25:37 +0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; logging-data="3271992"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/Nv76ajGPD/0qrMLEqQtfazjXO/VzGdEU="; posting-host="c420cdc7e69e3a804a94ab7d605930fe"
User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux)
Cancel-Lock: sha1:DmWnBnBx+tnTijdtwl0KVLQbm5o= sha1:H/JNcyhKR3Ndm9xYzQ5JWsoTHWI= sha256:0jWcOUZywZTnTDAun3H5OudVXRG3NftwvAKsjiUYsUk= sha1:pFewpH36FbhD8J7/Ezjz/1+zfv0= sha256:0K1HY7syBs+75aLtOYIu8MNLZ8U8ziUH1dLFuA1B1xg=
Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:401344
Michael S writes:
> On Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:42:54 -0700
> Tim Rentsch wrote:
>
>> That isn't surprising, considering that the recursive call
>> is not tail recursive.
>
> As mentioned above, the presented pseudo-code serves for illustration.
> The actual code executed the same multiplications in the same order but
> was writen in iterative style.
Right. Even though transformed into an iterative function body, the
pseudocode being a non-tail-recursive formulation might induce a bad
result in the resulting iterative code. General recursion can easily
produce bad structure relative to a more linear method.
It might be interesting to see the iterative code that you actually
ran, assuming of course there isn't too much clutter from how the
multiplications were done, etc.