From: skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net>
To: Jacques Garrigue <garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp>
Cc: jonathan.roewen@gmail.com, caml-list@yquem.inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] HOFs, recursion, and being tail-rec...
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:05:14 +1100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1139796314.8591.79.camel@rosella.wigram> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20060213.085348.126575598.garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp>
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 08:53 +0900, Jacques Garrigue wrote:
> From: Jonathan Roewen <jonathan.roewen@gmail.com>
> >
> > I have a simple implementation of depth-first-search, and was
> > wondering if my approach would qualify as tail-rec (whether from the
> > code it is/isn't, and whether ocaml can optimise it so it is).
>
> By definition a depth-first-search cannot be tail-recursive: you need
> a stack to implement the backtracking.
There is a need for a stack, but it doesn't have to be
a machine (control) stack. A basic principle of duality
seems to be that control and data can always be transformed
into each other (proof: Turing only has conditional goto).
In this case CPS provides the transform.
There is category error in Jacques claim: depth-first search
is an algorithm, it is a matter of *semantics*.
Tail-rec is merely a *syntactic* property, which has
semantic implications only for a particular implementation.
So it isn't a well formed sentence to say depth first
search cannot be tail-rec, it is easy to construct a
depth first search in any FPL that is.
However, no matter what you do, you will indeed need
memory linear in the tree depth (unless it is 1-ary tree as
pointed out).
BTW: considering control/data duality you will find that most compilers
miss very interesting optimisations. Ackermann's function
can be implemented using only 2 words (for the arguments)
per stack frame. No compilers I know of do this optimisation --
and I have not seen any reference to it in the literature.
--
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2006-02-13 2:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2006-02-12 22:08 Jonathan Roewen
2006-02-12 23:53 ` Jacques Garrigue
2006-02-13 2:05 ` skaller [this message]
2006-02-13 2:47 ` Jonathan Roewen
2006-02-13 3:23 ` skaller
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