Re: forcing tail/sibling call optimization

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

<<Therein lies the first problem -- programmer dependence on specific
optimizations in the compiler.  That's a fundamental mistake.
>>

I think this misses the point, this is not just an optimization, it is
a fundamental functional capability, in other words, we would want the
compiler to do this EVEN IF it slowed down execution. There is a big
difference between an optimization that simply saves some time, and
a fundamental transformation that changes the computational nature
of the program. Changing the amount of storage used from O(who knows
what) to O(1) is not simply an "optimization".