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Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 12:27:37 -0500
From: Norman Ramsey <nr@eecs.harvard.edu>
Message-Id: <199912131727.MAA20344@labrador.eecs.harvard.edu>
To: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: OCaml and tail recursion
Cc: nr@labrador.eecs.harvard.edu
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Dear Camllists,

I have just completed my first nontrival Caml program (an implementation
of the rsync algorithm) and I am distressed about the treatment of
tail calls.  My code has to go through files one character at a time,
and as an SML programmer from way back, I wrote the code using three
mutually recursive functions that make tail calls to each other.
Imagine my surprise when I started getting errors with stack overflow!
Apparently ocamlc doesn't optimize tail calls.  I made some progress
by using ocamlopt, but I miss being able to use the debugger.
Do experienced Camllists have any suggestions?


Norman