Re: Recursively calling a bash script goes undetected and eats all system memory

[Marc Herbert]

> What if bash were only to allow scripts to call themselves with
> exec?

Tail calls are not the only useful type of recursion, they're just a
particular case  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_call>
Sometimes you do want to return (and discard some lower side-effects)

(and it is not always obvious for a script to know what "itself" is)


> on the one hand software should be forgiving while on the other
> preventing every possible severe error is not easy.

Unix was not designed to be forgiving:
<http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch03s01.html#id2888136>