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Because its elements are related to the previous elements in a straightforward way, they are often defined using recursion. A drawing of the first 75 terms of Recamán's sequence, according with the method of visualization shown in the Numberphile video The Slightly Spooky Recamán Sequence [3]
Another example is a similar singly linked type in Java: class List < E > { E value ; List < E > next ; } This indicates that non-empty list of type E contains a data member of type E, and a reference to another List object for the rest of the list (or a null reference to indicate that this is the end of the list).
Structural recursion includes nearly all tree traversals, including XML processing, binary tree creation and search, etc. By considering the algebraic structure of the natural numbers (that is, a natural number is either zero or the successor of a natural number), functions such as factorial may also be regarded as structural recursion.
Many mathematical axioms are based upon recursive rules. For example, the formal definition of the natural numbers by the Peano axioms can be described as: "Zero is a natural number, and each natural number has a successor, which is also a natural number." [2] By this base case and recursive rule, one can generate the set of all natural numbers.
The natural numbers 𝐍 are an NNO where z is a function from a singleton to 𝐍 whose image is zero, and s is the successor function. (We could actually allow z to pick out any element of 𝐍, and the resulting NNO would be isomorphic to this one.) One can prove that the diagram in the definition commutes using mathematical induction.
The primitive recursive functions are closely related to mathematical finitism, and are used in several contexts in mathematical logic where a particularly constructive system is desired. Primitive recursive arithmetic (PRA), a formal axiom system for the natural numbers and the primitive recursive functions on them, is often used for this purpose.
In Zermelo–Fraenkel (ZF) set theory, the natural numbers are defined recursively by letting 0 = {} be the empty set and n + 1 (the successor function) = n ∪ {n} for each n. In this way n = {0, 1, …, n − 1} for each natural number n. This definition has the property that n is a set with n elements.
As with direct recursion, tail call optimization is necessary if the recursion depth is large or unbounded, such as using mutual recursion for multitasking. Note that tail call optimization in general (when the function called is not the same as the original function, as in tail-recursive calls) may be more difficult to implement than the ...