English Idiom in Unix: Directory Recursively

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

> The supposed inefficiency of recursive implementations is based 
> largely on the properties of hardware that is now obsolete. With 
> modern processors there's no great efficiency hit. In some of the 
> smaller microcontrollers, it's true, you do have to worry about stack 
> overflow; but the ARM processors, for example, provide plenty of stack 
> space.
>
> In the microcontroller world, the big performance hits come from the 
> fact that the only available compilers are for C and sometimes C++. 
> (And nobody uses assembly language except for the very little jobs.) 
> The nature of the C language prevents compilers from doing 
> optimisations that are standard in compilers for high-level languages. 
> Most C compilers will, for example, always pass parameters on the 
> stack, despite the generous supply of registers available in newer 
> hardware.
>
However, some C compilers will *also* have one or more "go faster" 
calling conventions that pass parameters in registers, which can be 
employed.  Over in the PC world, such "go faster" calling conventions 
are even the default calling convention if no calling convention is 
explicitly specified, for some C and C++ compilers.

     
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/function-calling-conventions.html#Compiler
     
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/function-calling-conventions.html#Optlink
     
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/function-calling-conventions.html#Watcall