Named IIFE (immediately invoked function expression) optimized away

[JsonFreeman]

(function factorial(n) {
    if (!n) {
        return 1;
    }
    return n * factorial(n-1);
})(3);

When this is compiled, the factorial function is optimized away because it is invoked immediately. I believe it is because of the condition here:

https://github.com/probmods/webppl/blob/dev/src/transforms/optimize.js#L85

I think it is good to check if the callee has a name, because then it might be used for recursion.

[null-a]

I wonder if (at least part of) the problem here is the fact that webppl doesn't bind the name of named function expressions in their body. e.g. ((function f() { return typeof f; })()); evaluates to 'function' in JS and 'undefined' in webppl?

(It's news to me that JS named function expressions do this.)

[JsonFreeman]

I think named function expressions generally get misunderstood. Its often sufficient in practice to assign an anonymous function expression to a named variable and use that for recursion and I think this is the most common practice in webppl. It really comes down to the issue of assigning a name to an intermediate expression.