[PRL] code size optimization via tail call elimination

[Eli Barzilay]

5 minutes ago, Doug Orleans wrote:
> I've been slowly making my way through the GDC Vault:
> 
> http://www.gdcvault.com/free/gdc-11
> 
> Specifically, the videos of post-mortem talks about classic video
> games.  My favorite so far is Will Wright (of Sims and Spore fame)
> talking about his first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, written in 1984
> for the Commodore 64.  At one point he talks about optimizing the
> memory footprint of the game, since he only had about 60k to work
> with.

(64k -- obviously.)

> What amused me was that his example for how to pick up a byte here
> and there was to look for a sequence of JSR (jump to subroutine)
> immediately followed by RTS (return from subroutine) and replacing
> it with a single JMP instruction.  In other words, he did tail call
> elimination, not to conserve stack space, but to conserve code size!

An even more practical example is optimizing shell scripts by placing
`exec's in the right places.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!