How to enable a recursive function to avoid stack overflow?

Question

If I have a recursive function in Java, I can call it infinitely with the following code:

void recfunction()
{
    recfunction();
    System.gc();
}

How can I do this in C++?

Answer 1

There is no standard way to force a c++ compiler to perform tail-call optimisation on a recursive function.

Having said that, gcc8 with -O2 will actually perform tail-call optimisation when possible.

https://godbolt.org/z/tSDODA