rust-lang / rust-lang/rust-clippy
New Lint: No recursion without tail calls
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Description
Based on this HIC++ guideline.
The stack explodes much faster using recursion than a huge BFS work queue would explode the heap. Therefore, if clippy detects some direct or indirect recursion that does not benefit from tail call optimisation, clippy should issue a warning along with a short description about why this is potentially bad and a short hint on how to transform recursive algorithms to iterative ones (e.g. using a work queue and BFS). And maybe a tl;dr about what tail calls are and how to make the algorithm tail recursive.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reviewing the linked HIC++ guideline and the proposal in issue #1678. Determine how direct and indirect recursion, tail-call optimization, and potential stack growth should be identified and explained. Done means a decided, implementable lint scope with warnings and guidance for transforming recursive algorithms into iterative ones.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- tooling
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100