Re: proper tail recursion for gcc

[Jim Blandy]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> But on most machines, where args are passed on the stack, it is
> probably only possible to return one or two args in registers anyway.
> The rest would have to be handled in memory, which probably means
> there is no way to do much better than the straightforward method.

All the new 32-bit or larger architectures pass the first half-dozen
arguments in registers.  Of course, i386's are still the most common
host for GNU, so it's true that "on most machines", arguments are
passed on the stack.  But the i386 is the last of the CISC machines
--- once it's dead, registers will be the norm.

That said, I agree that multiple values are not the first thing to
worry about.