Write stack safe non-tailrec recursive functions

Recrusive function is cool, but it sometimes cause stack overflow in naive implementation. I'll explain how to write any recursive functions in stack safe way.

Transcript

1. Write stack safe non-tailrec
   recursive functions
   @jooohn1234
   

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2. Jun Tomioka
   @jooohn1234
   Software Engineer at M3, Inc.
   

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3. Recursion is
   cool
   

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4. Recursive data structures
   

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5. Recursive functions
   

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6. Recursive functions
   ● Describe WHAT it is rather than HOW it’d be
   done
   

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7. Recursive functions
   ● Describe WHAT it is rather than HOW it’d be
   done
   Cool!
   FP Programmers
   

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8. Stack Overflow
   

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9. Recursive functions
   ● Tend to cause StackOverflowException
   

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10. Tail recursion
    ● Make functions tailrec to avoid StackOverflow
    

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11. Tail recursion
    ● Make functions tailrec to avoid StackOverflow
    Cool!
    FP Programmers
    

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12. Tail recursion
    ● Make functions tailrec to avoid StackOverflow
    

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13. Tail recursion
    ● Make functions tailrec to avoid StackOverflow
    It’s… cool!
    FP Programmers
    

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14. Tail recursion?
    ● Make functions tailrec to avoid StackOverflow
    … but can we?
    

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15. Tail recursion?
    ● Make functions tailrec to avoid StackOverflow
    … but can we?
    

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16. Tail recursion?
    ● Make functions tailrec to avoid StackOverflow
    … but can we?
    It’s…
    still cool I believe!
    FP Programmers
    

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17. Tail recursion?
    ● How many unique paths from S to G are there?
    S
    G
    

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18. Tail recursion?
    ● Can you make this recursive function tailrec?
    

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19. Tail recursion?
    ● Can you make this recursive function tailrec?
    ・・・
    FP Programmers
    

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20. Give up
    

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21. Tail-recursion’s limitation
    ● It tends to be difficult to convert recursive
    functions that depend on results of multiple
    recursive calls.
    

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22. Tail-recursion’s limitation
    ● It tends to be difficult to convert recursive
    functions that depend on results of multiple
    recursive calls.
    

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23. Tail-recursion’s limitation
    ● It tends to be difficult to convert recursive
    functions that depend on results of multiple
    recursive calls.
    Monad!
    FP Programmers
    

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24. The Monad version of recursion
    ● This function still describes the problem’s
    structure intuitively, doesn’t it?
    

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25. The Monad version of recursion
    ● This function still describes the problem’s
    structure intuitively, doesn’t it?
    Cool!
    FP Programmers
    

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26. The Monad version of recursion
    ● Of course just rewriting the recursive function
    with Monad doesn’t mean it is stack safe.
    

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27. Trampoline
    

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28. Trampoline
    ● > a trampoline is a loop that iteratively invokes
    thunk-returning functions
    ○ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampoline_(computing)
    #High-level_programming
    ○ “Trampoline” in computer science has a lot of
    meanings. This is just one of them.
    

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29. Trampoline
    ● A trampoline loop evaluates values one by one
    until it returns final result.
    ● We can write this evaluation loop as tailrec!
    Eval evaluate
    Eval
    Result
    OR
    loop
    

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30. Eval
    * We typically implement “Defer”, “Suspend” or something like that to avoid stack
    overflow when building the Eval.
    

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31. Eval
    * We typically implement “Defer”, “Suspend” or something like that to avoid stack
    overflow when building the Eval.
    Represents single value
    

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32. Eval
    * We typically implement “Defer”, “Suspend” or something like that to avoid stack
    overflow when building the Eval.
    Has following evaluation
    

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33. Eval: trampoline
    

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34. Eval: trampoline
    

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35. [Optional] Memoization
    ● This is not the essence, but memoization to
    reduce running time
    ● In many cases, we can make such “What it is”
    style of recursive functions faster by using
    memoization
    

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38. Beautiful
    FP Programmers
    

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39. Run with Id
    

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40. Run with Eval
    

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41. Run with Eval
    Cool!
    FP Programmers
    

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42. Let’s implement stack safe foldRight with Eval
    

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43. Let’s implement stack safe foldRight with Eval
    

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44. Let’s implement stack safe foldRight with Eval
    !!!
    FP Programmers
    

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45. Let’s implement stack safe foldRight with Eval
    This recursive call of loop
    causes stack overflow before
    stack safe trampoline
    evaluation
    

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46. Use Defer to defer Eval instance construction
    

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47. Use Defer to defer building Eval instance
    

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48. Use Defer to defer building Eval instance
    Stack safe!
    FP Programmers
    

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49. Recap
    ● Recursive functions is cool especially when it
    describes ”what” rather than ”how”
    ● We can apply the trampoline technique to
    avoid stack overflow when tail-recursion is not
    effective
    

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50. Thank you!
    

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