[rbehrends]

> Unless you, as the article notes, "know how to take advantage of it". Here's a fully tail-recursive binary tree traversal in OCaml:

This is a depth-first search with an explicit stack (the stack is tree :: worklist). You can do the same in an imperative language. Tail recursion here is only an extra-complicated way of writing a simple loop, and you're adding extra complexity by having two variables to represent the stack. The same code can be written just as (if not more) compactly in an imperative language.

[tom_mellior]

You are correct on all counts. Tail recursion allows you to reap the benefits of imperative programming in a purely functional setting, but only thanks to tail call optimization.