Re: Stack Size?

[Robert Uhl <address@hidden>]

Neil Jerram <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > I've re-written the function, but it seems to me that it'd perhaps
> > make more sense for Guile to simply grow the stack until it runs
> > out of memory.  Is there a technical reason this doesn't happen?
> 
> No idea, I'm afraid.  Perhaps it's considered a good thing for a
> language to allow applications to have a grip on their stack usage?

In a dynamic, functional language such as Scheme--or indeed any
language--I'm not so certain I agree.  While on the one hand switching
to a tail function is certainly more efficient, it seems to me that
that's not always the case.  And certainly it can often be much
clearer to write a bunch of functions which call bunches of functions
which...

> According to the output of `(debug-options 'full)', you can turn off
> stack size checking by setting the limit to 0, i.e.:
> 
> (debug-set! stack 0)

Well, I'll not do that unless I need to--but I'd really rather I
didn't need to.  Que sera sera, I s'pose:-)

It seems to me somewhat broken that one must set a debug option
explicitly off.  Sort of a command-line switch --behave-yourself, when
that should be the default behaviour.  Certainly, stack size checks
may be _very_ useful when testing code.  But just as certainly, in
production those same checks are a nuisance, and can cause code to
break.

Or am I just being foolish?  It's a definite possibility, I'll
grant:-)

-- 
Robert Uhl <address@hidden>
The purpose of the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee was pretty
clearly to protect political discourse.  But liberals reject the notion
that free speech is therefore limited to political topics, even broadly
defined.  True, that purpose is not inscribed in the amendment itself.
But why leap to the conclusion that a broadly worded constitutional
freedom (`the right of the people to keep and bear arms') is narrowly
limited by its stated purpose, unless you're trying to explain it away?
My New Republic colleague Mickey Kaus says that if liberals interpreted
the Second Amendment the way they interpret the rest of the Bill of
Rights, there would be law professors arguing that gun ownership is
mandatory.       --Michael Kinsley Washington Post, January 8, 1990