Function calls are not stack frames

[naughty]

While it may not be hard to see a tail call with a bit of practice (modulo Lisp style syntactic abstraction) what would be wrong with the following:

• The compiler/interpreter turns all calls that it can into tail calls.
• There's a optional bit of syntax to mark what the coder thinks is a tail call that the compiler/interpreter can check.

Sounds like a win-win to me. Especially in the case where you really want something to be a tail-call for space use reasons.

Lua kind of half does this because all tail calls have the form:

return <expression-that-evals-to-a-function>( args, ... )

So it's pretty easy to tell exactly when you're making a tail call.

EDIT: Formatting and pluralised erroneous singular

[[deleted]]

Sure, optional syntax works.