Stack overflow despite tail call position but only

Question

Originated from this question, I have this little F# code (github) to generate random values according to a normal distribution:

// val nextSingle : (unit -> float32)
let nextSingle =
    let r = System.Random()
    r.NextDouble >> float32

// val gauss : (float32 -> float32 -> seq<float32>)
let gauss mean stdDev =
    let rec gauss ready = seq {
        match ready with
        | Some spare ->
            yield spare * stdDev + mean
            yield! gauss None
        | _ ->
            let rec loop () =
                let u = nextSingle() * 2.f - 1.f
                let v = nextSingle() * 2.f - 1.f
                let s = pown u 2 + pown v 2
                if s >= 1.f || s = 0.f then loop() else
                u, v, s
            let u, v, s = loop()
            let mul = (*)(sqrt(-2.f * log s / s))
            yield mul u * stdDev + mean
            yield! mul v |> Some |> gauss
    }
    gauss None

To me it seems that this should only call itself in tail call position, ergo never cause a StackOverflowException when TCO is enabled. But it does when running 64-bit. It does not when running 32-bit (i.e. “Prefer 32-bit” checkbox in project settings).

I'm using .NET Framework 4.5.2 and F# 4.4.0.0.

Can somebody explain what is causing the problem?

Answer 1

Looks like a bug in the compiler's sequence expression compilation mechanism. Here's a simplified repro:

let rec loop r = seq {
    if r > 0 then
        let rec unused() = unused()
        yield r
        yield! loop r
}

printfn "%i" (Seq.nth 10000000 (loop 1))

Obviously the presence of the unused recursive definition shouldn't affect whether this generates a stack overflow, but it does.