[plt-scheme] Does the procedure know who called it and how manytimes?

On Jul 27, 2007, at 10:09 PM, Majorinc, Kazimir wrote:

> Let us imagine I have large tree data structure of nodes and I want  
> to calculate the SIZE of the subtree for some node. I can do it  
> easily with some recursive function.
>
> Now, my data structure is not the tree but it is more general  
> graph. Using the same recursive procedure, there is a lot of  
> redundancy. I can avoid that redundancy if I implement some kind of  
> memoization of the SIZE and store values in some hash-table, or  
> much better in the special field in the nodes of the graph. In both  
> cases, I need to know whether procedure is called by itself (and  
> then obey existing memoization) or it is called by some other  
> function (and then initiate new memoization.)
>
> There are few ways it can be done, for example, to define two  
> procedures, SIZE and SIZE-PRIVATE (called only from SIZE), but it  
> is certainly less elegant approach.


Why not

  (define (size g)
    (define (local-size g)
      ... (map local-size (neighbors current-node)) ...)
    (local-size g))

Now you know that size is a global call and local-size is a local call.

-- Matthias