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explain the concept of tail recursion using a programming language
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tail recursion is an optimization technique used in recursive functions that allows a function to call itself without having to store the previous state of the program. this is done by replacing the recursive call with a loop, thus eliminating the need to store the previous state on the stack. as an example, the following code in python demonstrates a tail recursive function that finds the sum of the first n numbers:

def tail_recursive(n, result):
    if n == 0:
        return result
    else:
        return tail_recursive(n - 1, n + result)

sum = tail_recursive(5, 0)
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