Tail recursion to while iteration in 2 easy steps

[Terry Reedy]

On 10/4/2013 6:46 AM, Ian Kelly wrote:

> On the other hand, if you start optimizing every tail call and not
> just the recursive functions, then I can see where that could start to
> get problematic for debugging -- as arbitrary functions get removed
> from the stack traces just because they happened to end in tail calls.

The idea of CPython space-optimizing tail calls when the call is made 
has been suggested on python-ideas. Guido verified that it is 
technically possible with the current bytecode interpreter but rejected 
it because it would arbitrarily mess up stack traces.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy