Re: [Caml-list] Why List.map does not be implemented tail-recursively?

[Malcolm Matalka <mmatalka@gmail.com>]

https://blogs.janestreet.com/optimizing-list-map/

And from the horse's mouth:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/fa.caml/YaLYqkpn928/1jdo8a0K6AEJ

Shuai Wang <wangshuai901@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello list,
>
>
> I am working on some stack_overflow exception in our recent project written
> in OCaml
> and eventually it turns out that this exception is thrown by List.map
> function.
>
> By seeing the source code of OCaml's List module
> <https://code.ohloh.net/file?fid=P5Us_txNCMHIhpdfML6OZ8QN4Zs&cid=Jigg8RAfQdg&s=ocaml%20list.ml&pp=0&fp=305967&fe=ml&ff=1&filterChecked=true&mp=1&ml=1&me=1&md=1#L3>,
> it seems that map function
> does not be implemented tail-recursively:
>
> let rec map f = function
>     [] -> []
>   | a::l -> let r = f a in r :: map f l
>
>
>
> So my question is:
>
> *Why would OCaml's implementation List.map like this?  *
>
> In my humble option, it definitely should be written in a tail-recursive
> way,
> and it not, stack_overflow would be unavoidable.
> For example in order to handle the exception,
> I abandon the code using List.map and rewrite it into a tail-recursive help
> function.
>
> Best,
> Shuai