Re: Difference between for and while loop

[Richard Hector <rhector@paradise.net.nz>]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 04:40:00PM +0300, Aryan Ameri wrote:
> On Friday 18 April 2003 13:46, Frank Gevaerts wrote:

> > - theoretical : both while and for loops are unneeded : recursion is
> >   much nicer
> 
> Newbish question, what's recursion ?

Calling a function from within itself - this example calls itself directly,
but it could call a second function which calls the first or whatever.

This is the classic example, though I'm not guaranteeing it's correct :-)

int factorial(int n){
  if (n == 0)
    return 0;
  if (n == 1)
    return 1;
  else
    return (n * factorial(n-1));
}

If used inappropriately it can chew up all your memory. Failing to have a
condition under which it terminates is a disaster (like if you call the
above with a negative number ...).

I saw a classmate several years ago code his main event loop by recursing
main() - it ran out of memory very quickly :-)

Richard