3 ms·

For state machines nothing beats tail calls. Those are effectively a goto, but much more expressive and readable. Too bad those are not implemented in supposedl

• MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  > Too bad those are not implemented in supposedly high-performance popular languages. Perhaps a nitpick: you presumably mean tail-call optimisation, which isn't the same thing as a tail-call. To my knowledge modern C compilers are generally able to perform the optimisation. I believe Java has a hard time with tail-call optimisation as its exception-handling features require it to faithfully track the call stack in case an exception is thrown.
  • spc476 5y ago
    Yes, GCC can do tail-call optimization. What you can't do is rely up on in C. Lua has tail-call optimizations and because of that, you can rely upon it. There is a difference.
    • MaxBarraclough 5y ago
      Right, some languages guarantee tail-call optimisation in the language spec itself. The C standard doesn't do this.
  • srean 5y ago
    > Perhaps a nitpick: you presumably mean tail-call optimisation, which isn't the same thing as a tail-call. Tail calls consuming unnecessary stack space is a common pessimisation.