Stack performance in programming languages

Question

Just for fun, I tried to compare the stack performance of a couple of programming languages calculating the Fibonacci series using the naive recursive algorithm. The code is

Answer 1

With C, you should either declare the fibonacci function "inline", or, using gcc, add the -finline-functions argument to the compile options. That will allow the compiler to do recursive inlining. That's also the reason why with -O3 you get better performance, it activates -finline-functions.

Edit You need to at least specify -O/-O1 to have recursive inlining, also if the function is declared inline. Actually, testing myself I found that declaring the function inline and using -O as compilation flag, or just using -O -finline-functions, my recursive fibonacci code was faster than with -O2 or -O2 -finline-functions.

Answer 2

Note that if the Java Hotspot VM is smart enough to memoise fib() calls, it can cut down the exponentional cost of the algorithm to something nearer to linear cost.