last call optimisation
Normally when procedure A calls procedures B, C, .., Z, the environment of
procedure A is only discarded when procedure Z returns and procedure A itself
terminates. Using last call optimisation, A's environment is discarded as Z is
called. This allows arbitrarily deep nesting of procedure calls without
consuming memory to store useless environments.
A special case of this is tail recursion optimisation where the last procedure
called is the calling procedure itself.
Nearby terms:
laser « laser printer « Lasherism « last call
optimisation » last-in first-out » LAT » latch
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