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Re: Looking for info on making recursions eat less stack.


  • To: mathgroup@smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg11244] Re: Looking for info on making recursions eat less stack.
  • From: Paul Abbott <paul@physics.uwa.edu.au>
  • Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 01:39:09 -0500
  • Organization: University of Western Australia
  • References: <6ctiv2$lr4@smc.vnet.net>

Barthelet, Luc wrote:

> I have some Mathematica code that use a function recursively. at a depth
> of about 500, the kernel dies. ( I raised $RecursionLimit). I am
> currently assuming that it is because I eat up too much stack.
> 
> Is there any info about what to do to get a recusive function to consume
> less stack?
> 
> I kept the number of local variable to a minimum. the ByteCount of the
> local variables plus the parameters of the function is 2736 (which is
> quite a bit).
> Still I should be able to go to deeper than 500.
> 
> Also $RecursionLimit warning message does not match the actual deph, but
> seems to be about 4 times deeper than my function. Does that make
> sense?

Perhaps you could post your example?

Are you using Dynamic programming? This can help in many recursive
problems (but can also consume large amounts of memory).  For example,
compare

In[1]:= fib[0]=fib[1]=1;
In[2]:= fib[n_]:=fib[n-1]+fib[n-2]
In[3]:= fib[20]//Timing
Out[3]= {1.3 Second,10946}

with

In[4]:= fib[n_]:=fib[n]=fib[n-1]+fib[n-2] In[5]:= fib[20]//Timing
Out[5]= {0. Second,10946}

Cheers,
	Paul 

____________________________________________________________________ 
Paul Abbott                                   Phone: +61-8-9380-2734
Department of Physics                           Fax: +61-8-9380-1014
The University of Western Australia            Nedlands WA  6907       
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http://www.pd.uwa.edu.au/~paul

            God IS a weakly left-handed dice player
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