Tail Recursion
A function is tail-recursive if the value it returns is either (a) computed without any further calls to the function, or (b) is exactly the value of a recursive call, without any modification.
Tail-recursive functions are desirable because they can be executed more efficiently.
Our design pattern for auxiliary functions allows tail-recursive functions to be written:
(define (factorial n) (factorialb n 1))(define (factorialb n answer) (if (<= n 0) answer (factorialb (1- n) (* n answer)) ) )
This version of factorial is tail-recursive, while the previous version was not.