Final answer:
The statement that List.fold_left is inherently tail recursive is true. It is designed to process lists in functional programming languages without growing the call stack, thus efficiently handling large lists.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement "List.fold_left is inherently tail recursive" is True. In functional programming, which includes languages like OCaml, a tail-recursive function is one in which the final result of a recursive call is the final result of the function itself; it does not need to perform any further computations once the recursive call returns. List.fold_left is designed to be tail recursive, which means that it can process lists without growing the call stack, thereby avoiding stack overflow errors on large lists.
As an example, when you use List.fold_left to sum the elements of a list, the accumulator that maintains the sum is updated with each element, and the recursive call to List.fold_left is the last thing that happens in the process. This allows the sum computation to scale efficiently even for very long lists.