Tail Call Optimization in Go

go tail-recursion tail-call-optimization
dxuhuang picture dxuhuang · Aug 24, 2012 · Viewed 10k times · Source

Does the Go programming language, as of now, optimize tail calls? If not, does it at least optimize tail-recursive calls of a function to itself?

Answer

Rostyslav Dzinko picture Rostyslav Dzinko · Aug 24, 2012

Everything you can find over the Internet, that "Go supports tailable recursions in some cases", and that was told in mailing list:

It is already there in 6g/8g for certain cases, and in gccgo somewhat more generally.

We do not currently plan to change the language to require that compilers implement tail call optimization in all cases. If you must have a tail call, you use a loop or a goto statement.

To get those cases you'd better dig into golang source, which is open.

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