Interesting math problem

[Marc Christiansen]

sturlamolden <sturlamolden at yahoo.no> wrote:
> On 18 Mar, 00:58, Jeff Schwab <j... at schwabcenter.com> wrote:
> 
>> def make_slope(distance, parts):
>>      if parts == 0:
>>          return []
>>
>>      q, r = divmod(distance, parts)
>>
>>      if r and parts % r:
>>          q += 1
>>
>>      return [q] + make_slope(distance - q, parts - 1)
> 
> Beautiful. If Python could optimize tail recursion, it would even run
> fast.

This was my first thought, too. But tailcall optimisation wouldn't help
here. `make_slope` is not tail recursive, the `+` (aka list.extend) gets
executed after the recursion. 

Marc