rrecursionfunctional-programmingtail-recursion

Tail recursion on R Statistical Environment

Does R support proper tail recursion and where can I find documentation about this?

Solution

  • It's quite easy to find out that R does not support tail recursion optimization:

    f <- function(n) {
if (n != 0) f(n-1)
}
f(100000)
# Error: evaluation nested too deeply: infinite recursion / options(expressions=)?

    Had tail calls been optimized to jumps, then this function would have terminated without problems.