[PRL] almost tail-calling (was: Re: deeep stack)

[Bryan Chadwick]

-Xmx is Heap size... -Xss is stack...

 >% for i in 4 8 16 32; do echo "  $i:"; java -Xss${i}M Stack; done
   4:
    257616
    172244
   8:
    519760
    347006
   16:
    1044048
    696532
   32:
    2092624
    1395582


   class Stack{
     public static void main(String args[]){
         System.out.println("   "+depth0()+
                            "\n   "+depth1(1));
     }
     static int depth0(){
         try{ return 1+depth0(); }
         catch(Error e){ return 1; }
     }
     static int depth1(int i){
         try{ return depth1(i+1); }
         catch(Error e){ return i; }
     }
   }


> Yes, and of course it's also dependent on system memory; I tried to 
> control for this, but discovered that (at least on my OSX 10.4 Java 1.5) 
> mac, the -Xmx command-line argument had no effect on this number.
> 
> Also, you need look no further than Joshua Zucker's post yesterday on 
> plt-scheme to see an example where you want a tail-calling loop to go 
> deeper than hundreds of millions.