Subject: Re: Please help!! From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/02/09 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3127567131757704@naggum.no> * Stig Hemmer <stig@pvv.ntnu.no> | The problem is that you will spend a lot of effort making a | optimalization routine that will only be used very very seldom. Most | programs do _not_ look like fibonacci. well... apart from wanting to avoid the first recursive function call (which can be done with a simple iteration from a lower limit to the value in question, but this is not something I want the compiler to decide for me), optimizing fibonacci is mostly a matter of memoizing. it _would_ be useful if a compiler could see that there is no way a function would return a different value if given the same arguments, i.e., automated detection of side-effect-free functions and various means of propagation of this information. #:Erik -- Y2K conversion simplified: Januark, Februark, March, April, Mak, June, Julk, August, September, October, November, December.