The supposed inefficiency of recursive implementations is based
largely on the properties of hardware that is now obsolete. With
modern processors there's no great efficiency hit. In some of the
smaller microcontrollers, it's true, you do have to worry about stack
overflow; but the ARM processors, for example, provide plenty of stack
space.
In the microcontroller world, the big performance hits come from the
fact that the only available compilers are for C and sometimes C++.
(And nobody uses assembly language except for the very little jobs.)
The nature of the C language prevents compilers from doing
optimisations that are standard in compilers for high-level languages.
Most C compilers will, for example, always pass parameters on the
stack, despite the generous supply of registers available in newer
hardware.
However, some C compilers will *also* have one or more "go faster"
calling conventions that pass parameters in registers, which can be
employed. Over in the PC world, such "go faster" calling conventions
are even the default calling convention if no calling convention is
explicitly specified, for some C and C++ compilers.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/function-calling-conventions.html#Compiler
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/function-calling-conventions.html#Optlink
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/function-calling-conventions.html#Watcall
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