>>>>> "Glynn" == Glynn Clements <glynn(a)sensei.co.uk&gt; writes: Michael> Let me again mention that Scheme compilers are among the Michael> best-optimizing compilers for higher-level languages, and Michael> often achieve code performance comparable to C. Ray> Which compilers do this? I know Stalin is very good, but it compiles Ray> to C as does gambit, so these must have the performance hit. No, they must not. They perform high-level optimizations which can offset what going through C loses you. Scheme compilers which do very well currently are: - Gambit - Bigloo - Stalin - Chez Scheme Will Clinger's benchmarks for Twobit (not yet released) also show it to be doing well. Ray> I guess my question is, if things were written recursively, how a big Ray> a stack would we use and would that be big enough to matter? Michael> I don't even understand the question. Tail calls don't use stack Ray> I meant if it wasn't tail-recursive. Then they can't be addressed using pure iteration, and the stack issue remains exactly the same as everywhere else. -- Cheers =8-} Chipsy Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla