On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Eli Barzilay wrote:

> I was aware of the possible optimization at the time, but didn't find
> any example where it mattered.  However, if you do put it in:
>
>>             [(promise? p)
>>              (let* ((v (force p)))
>>               (if (not (pair? (promise-p prom)))
>>                   (set-promise-p! prom (list v)))
>>               (car (promise-p prom)))]
>
> then you do the recursive forcing of `p' in a non-tail conext.  My
> (vague, not formal at all) feeling about these "referral promises" is
> that they do happen in places where the original code had a tail call,
> so it might be a bad idea to break it.

The suggested optimization looks very suspicious also to me.
It seems that the non-tail-call could break space-safety.

Two questions:

  - Have you run the SRFI-45 tests on your suggested optimization?
    Note that this involves uncommenting the mostly nonterminating
    test cases, letting them run for some time, keeping track
    of the memory consumption with some other tool, and verifying
    that it stays bounded.  Of course, this is not a substitute
    for a theoretical analysis, but it should show pretty quickly
    if you are not on the right track.

  - Did you find the same slowdown for the first implementation
    given in the message
    http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-45/post-mail-archive/msg00010.html ?
    (That one is easier for me to understand and comment on - Eli's
    I would have to study again).

Cheers
Andre