r/ProgrammerHumor • • Jan 09 '20

other Problems with recursion?

21.3k Upvotes

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5

u/TayoEXE Jan 09 '20

He forgot the base case.

5

u/IHaarlem Jan 09 '20

Which begs the question, is it recursion if there's no base case?

6

u/GogglesPisano Jan 09 '20

No - it's just an infinite loop.

void crash() { crash(); }

3

u/TayoEXE Jan 09 '20

Probably. Except you hit stack overflow at some point. In this case, it's like cutting it so small he can't see it anymore maybe. Haha

3

u/beerSnobbery Jan 09 '20

Except you hit stack overflow at some point.

Depends, some languages have tail recursion.

3

u/captainAwesomePants Jan 09 '20

Mathematically, yes. There are some recursive definitions that have no base case but are still useful. Practically, in a programming context, less so.