5 ms·

Lack of a guarantee says you should use explicit loops.

• majewsky 6y ago
  That's assuming the tail call is visible in human-level source code. You could also have a situation where A tail-calls B, B tail-calls C and C tail-calls A. If B and C get inlined, you now have the opportunity to convert A's self-tail-call into a loop. Refactoring A manually may not be desirable, e.g. if inlining B and C cause significant code duplication, or if they live in entirely different libraries.
  • heavenlyblue 6y ago
    This is obviously a mistake if that happened, are you proposing for the compilers to “fix” this bug automatically until someone changes one of these functions to not do a tail call and it explodes out of the blue?
    • majewsky 6y ago
      Why would that be a mistake?
• steveklabnik 6y ago
  I agree. Not sure why you're downvoted.