Some good-hearted criticism

[Lennart Augustsson]

Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote:

> Alastair David Reid:
>
> > Note that "recursive" doesn't (necessarily) mean "stack hungry" in
> > functional languages.  Only imperative languages feel compelled to
> > guarantee that infinitely recursive functions will run out of stack
> > space.
>
> Well, a STRICT functional language doesn't seem to have much choice
> either. Or am I missing some nice trick? (Don't mention tail recursion).

There are some other tricks to play to convert non-tail recursive functions
into tail recursive ones.  E.g., the map function (using the standard definition)
has been optimized by LISP compilers since the stone age to avoid using
stack.

    -- Lennart