Tail Call Optimization
Explore tail call optimization in Kotlin to improve recursive function performance by converting recursion into iteration. Understand how to use the tailrec keyword properly to avoid stack overflow errors and increase efficiency in your Kotlin programs.
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What is tail call optimization?
Consider the code you write to be a procedure and the generated bytecode that will eventually run to be a process. The factorialIterative() function is an iterative procedure and is compiled into and will run as an iterative process—no surprise there. Likewise, factorialRec() is a recursive procedure and is compiled into, and run as, a recursive process, exactly what we’d expect there as well. However, the real gain, as explained in
That’s intriguing—compiling recursion into iteration—that’s exactly what the tailrec annotation will instruct the Kotlin compiler to do. Let’s rewrite the factorialRec() function to make use of that technique. ...