[Haskell-cafe] Re: A guess on stack-overflows - thunks build-up and tail recursion

[Edsko de Vries]

> The problem occurs when the result value is needed and thus the  
> thunks need to be reduced, starting with the outermost, which can't  
> be reduced without reducing the next one .... etc and it's these  
> reduction steps that are pushed on the stack until its size cause a  
> stack-overflow.

Yes, that's exactly right, and something that's not often pointed out.

Edsko