Advantages of Tail Call Optimization
- Significant reduction in stack space usage, reducing the risk of running into stack overflow.
- Improvement in performance due to reduction in overhead of managing stack frames, leading to faster execution.
- Supports functional programming, where recursion is commonly used for solving problems.
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Tail Call Optimisation in C
In C programming, Tail Call Optimization (TCO) is a technique that eliminates the need for an additional stack frame to store the data of another function by reusing the current function’s stack frame. This optimization technique is only possible for tail function calls.
What is Tail Call?
The tail call is the type of function call where another function is called as the last action of the current function. Here, the function call is present as the last statement at the end of the current function’s body.
The tail call optimization is most useful in tail recursion where the last thing a function does is to call itself. In such cases, it converts the recursive function to an iterative function by reusing the current stack frame for all function calls. It helps in reducing the space complexity of the recursive function.