Why does Erlang refuse to create a stack trace with higher-order functions?

Question

Erlang creates good stack traces when something goes wrong, it is useful when the programmer wants to understand why it went wrong. However, with higher-order functions, the stack trace mechanism seems short. For example, compare the two examples below (I added the generated stack traces to the code comments).

I read about the difficulties of creating stack traces for lazy evaluation (like in Haskell) before. But since Erlang is rated strictly, I expected a better result here.

My question is: what makes higher-order functions an issue for the mechanism that Erlang uses to create a stack trace? And are there any other well-known technologies that will give the best result?

  1 -module(test).
  2 -export([f/1,a/1]).
  3 
  4 % Auxilary function to print stack trace (by throwing an exception).
  5 
  6 s(X) when X < 0 -> 0.
  7 
  8 % Example 1: Stack trace in presence of a higher order function.
  9 %
 10 % > test:f(1).
 11 % ** exception error: no function clause matching test:s(1) (test.erl, line 6)
 12 %      in function  test:g/2 (test.erl, line 15)
 13 
 14 f(X)   -> h(fun g/2,X).
 15 g(X,Y) -> s(X) - Y.
 16 h(I,X) -> I(X,3).
 17 
 18 % Example 2: Stack trace for chain of 1st order function applications.
 19 % 
 20 % > test:a(1).           
 21 % ** exception error: no function clause matching test:s(1) (test.erl, line 6)
 22 %      in function  test:c/1 (test.erl, line 28)
 23 %      in call from test:b/1 (test.erl, line 27)
 24 %      in call from test:a/1 (test.erl, line 26)
 25 
 26 a(X) -> b(X) + 1.
 27 b(X) -> c(X) + 2.
 28 c(X) -> s(X) + 3.

Answer 1

This is not the result of using higher order functions as such, but optimization of tail optimization. If the last action that the function performs before returning calls another function, then Erlang VM optimizes the stack stack because it is no longer needed. (This is why you can do recursion without.)

f h , . , a, b c , , , .