[swift-evolution] Proposal: Tail Call Optimization keyword/attribute

[Per Melin]

On Sat, Dec 5, 2015 at 2:55 PM, T.J. Usiyan <griotspeak at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Tail call optimization can be a powerful tool when implementing certain
> types of algorithms. Unfortunately, ARC's semantics interfere with our
> ability to handle all possible cases of tail call recursion. An attribute,
> similar to Scala's `tailrec`, along with LLVM warnings, could allow a clear
> indicator of when such optimizations are not guaranteed to work.
>

I have primarily worked in functional languages with guaranteed tail call
elimination for many years. Turning to Swift, I (grudgingly) try to avoid
recursion altogether simply because of the risk of blowing the stack.
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