Re: Tail-Call Elimination Use-Cases

Andreas Bauer <baueran@in.tum.de> wrote:
>
> I think, such an optimisation in gcc would open a new customer-base to
> the compiler (and I'm not only referring to the Haskell community here).
> A few use-cases and examples would help me to convince maintainers and
> programmers of gcc alike, just how important it is to solve the
> "tail-call problem".


1) I'm writing a compiler for a functional language, and I'd like to
compile to GNU C. I can't do that very easily without cross-function
tail calls.


2) Cross-function tail calls enable a very beautiful style of
implementing state machines, in which each function represents a state
in the state machine and a state transition is a function call. This
is a very clean and modular style, and you can't do this without tail
calls because you'll blow the stack.


3) Full tail-call optimization permits writing code in continuation
passing style. This makes coding things like backtracking and
coroutines easier.
--
Neel Krishnaswami
neelk@alum.mit.edu

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