On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 02:41, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Sat, May 01, 2004 at 11:59:10AM +1000, skaller wrote:
> > BTW: documentation that says a function is 'tail recursive'
> > is misguided. That's an implementation detail of no
> > possible use to a user of the function. The user may
> > benefit from knowing the complexity of the function
> > in terms of speed and auxilliary storage required.
> 
> That wrong.  I really want to know whether or not I'm going to get a
> stack overflow from using a function on a large list.

Sigh. I agree. You want to know that. And saying
'tail-rec' DOES NOT TELL YOU. Saying O(1) stack does.
So I'd like to see those comments changed to actually
describe behaviour in abstract terms, rather than
just being a loose hint about the possible implementation,
leaving you to guess what the implication is.

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller@users.sf.net
voice: 061-2-9660-0850, 
snail: PO BOX 401 Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
Checkout the Felix programming language http://felix.sf.net



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