[Python-ideas] FW: Idea: Compressing the stack on the fly

[Joshua Landau]

On 12 September 2013 07:59, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> On 12.09.2013 06:29, Joshua Landau wrote:
>> Does anyone actually write recursive Python code where the recursion
>> in a significant bottleneck? The only such code I can think of is
>> either for a tree, in which case stack depth is irrelevant, or bad
>> code.
>
> Any kind of backtracking algorithm will need recursion or a separate
> stack data structure to keep track of the various decisions made
> up to a certain point on the path.
>
> The C stack is rather limited in size, so a recursive parser can
> easily blow up if it uses the C stack alone for managing
> backtracking.

What sort of algorithm would backtrack that many times? I doubt a
parser would and I can't think of anything worse ATM.