Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!bill
From: bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Should I convert FORTRAN code to C?
Message-ID: <436@proxftl.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jul 88 16:09:36 GMT
References: <2742@utastro.UUCP> <4700015@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Proximity Technology, Ft. Lauderdale
Lines: 21

In article <4700015@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, kenny@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
> On the discussion of whether or not `recursion is necessary,' I have
> at least a nickel's worth of comment.  The example shown is frightful!

> [...very long description of recursion elimination]

It is the fact that most (but not all) recursion can be
eliminated by techniques similar to those he describes that I
advocate always giving an "it has to be recursive" routine a
thorough examination to see whether that is true or not.

However, I rarely write recursive routines, not because I
optimize the recursion out, but because my programming habits are
such that I almost always think first of iteration. When
iteration is possible, it is usually better than recursion.

Should that fail, then I write it recursively. Then I try to
optimize it out.

The only routines that this routinely fails for is data
structure traversal routines where backup is necessary.