4 ms·

Then later, after some minor unrelated change, compiler stops optimizing and it suddenly starts overflowing the stack. How can anyone put up with that?

• mhh__ 7y ago
  If you rely on an optimization like this, that's not a code smell as much as a code-sewer: This is one of those optimizations that a very clever compiler might be able to do interprocedurally give a certain input for example.
• cryptonector 7y ago
  I expect the compiler would optimize the tail recursion into a loop, so the likely worst case is not that you blow the stack but that you spin for a while.
  • rini17 7y ago
    Not really, any expectations here are unsupported by C standards. Compiler is, by spec, allowed to do anything here.