F# tail call optimization with 2 recursive calls?

Question

As I was writing this function I knew that I wouldn't get tail call optimization. I still haven't come up with a good way of handling this and was hoping someone else might offer suggestions.

I've got a tree:

type Heap<'a> =
| E
| T of int * 'a * Heap<'a> * Heap<'a>

And I want to count how many nodes are in it:

let count h =
    let rec count' h acc =
        match h with 
        | E -> 0 + acc
        | T(_, value, leftChild, rightChild) ->
            let acc = 1 + acc
            (count' leftChild acc) + (count' rightChild acc)

    count' h 0

This isn't isn't optimized because of the addition of the counts for the child nodes. Any idea of how to make something like this work if the tree has 1 million nodes?

Thanks, Derek

Here is the implementation of count using CPS. It still blew the stack though.

let count h =
    let rec count' h acc cont =
        match h with
        | E -> cont (1 + acc)
        | T(_,_,left,right) ->
            let f = (fun lc -> count' right lc cont)
            count' left acc f

    count' h 0 (fun (x: int) -> x)

Maybe I can come up with some way to partition the tree into enough pieces that I can count without blowing the stack?

Someone asked about the code which generates the tree. It is below.

member this.ParallelHeaps threads =
    let rand = new Random()
    let maxVal = 1000000

    let rec heaper i h =
        if i < 1 then
            h
        else
            let heap = LeftistHeap.insert (rand.Next(100,2 * maxVal)) h
            heaper (i - 1) heap

    let heaps = Array.create threads E
    printfn "Creating heap of %d elements, with %d threads" maxVal threads
    let startTime = DateTime.Now
    seq { for i in 0 .. (threads - 1) ->
          async { Array.set heaps i (heaper (maxVal / threads) E) }}
    |> Async.Parallel
    |> Async.RunSynchronously 
    |> ignore

    printfn "Creating %d sub-heaps took %f milliseconds" threads (DateTime.Now - startTime).TotalMilliseconds
    let startTime = DateTime.Now

    Array.length heaps |> should_ equal threads <| "The size of the heaps array should match the number of threads to process the heaps"

    let rec reMerge i h =
        match i with 
        | -1 -> h
        | _  -> 
            printfn "heap[%d].count = %d" i (LeftistHeap.count heaps.[i])
            LeftistHeap.merge heaps.[i] (reMerge (i-1) h)

    let heap = reMerge (threads-1) E
    printfn "Merging %d heaps took %f milliseconds" threads (DateTime.Now - startTime).TotalMilliseconds
    printfn "heap min: %d" (LeftistHeap.findMin heap)

    LeftistHeap.count heap |> should_ equal maxVal <| "The count of the reMerged heap should equal maxVal"

F# tail call optimization with 2 recursive calls?

2 Answers