👀 Views: 30 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-27

scala recursion performance tail-recursion Scala

I need some guidance on I recently switched to I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me... I'm working with a `java.lang.StackOverflowError` when trying to process a large dataset recursively in Scala 2.13.6. My function is designed to traverse a nested structure representing a tree, and it's supposed to sum up the values of the leaves. However, with a large enough tree, it hits the stack limit. Here’s a simplified version of the code: ```scala case class Node(value: Int, children: List[Node]) def sumLeaves(node: Node): Int = { if (node.children.isEmpty) { node.value } else { node.children.map(sumLeaves).sum } } ``` I’ve tried using tail recursion by keeping track of the sum in an accumulator, but I’m not sure how to properly implement that. Here’s my attempt: ```scala def sumLeavesTailRecursive(node: Node, acc: Int = 0): Int = { if (node.children.isEmpty) { acc + node.value } else { node.children.foldLeft(acc)((sum, child) => sumLeavesTailRecursive(child, sum)) } } ``` However, when I run this version, I still experience high memory usage but no immediate stack overflow. I’m wondering if there’s a more efficient way to handle this or if I’m missing something with my tail recursion. Any advice on how to optimize this recursive function or alternative approaches that could prevent stack overflow errors would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is macOS. What am I doing wrong? I'm working in a Ubuntu 20.04 environment. I'm open to any suggestions.