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"Recursive algorithms are particularly appropriate when the underlying problem or the data to be treated are defined in recursive terms." [27] The examples in this section illustrate what is known as "structural recursion". This term refers to the fact that the recursive procedures are acting on data that is defined recursively.
These examples reduce easily to a single recursive function by inlining the forest function in the tree function, which is commonly done in practice: directly recursive functions that operate on trees sequentially process the value of the node and recurse on the children within one function, rather than dividing these into two separate functions.
A recursive step — a set of rules that reduces all successive cases toward the base case. For example, the following is a recursive definition of a person's ancestor. One's ancestor is either: One's parent (base case), or; One's parent's ancestor (recursive step). The Fibonacci sequence is another classic example of recursion: Fib(0) = 0 as ...
In computer science, corecursion is a type of operation that is dual to recursion.Whereas recursion works analytically, starting on data further from a base case and breaking it down into smaller data and repeating until one reaches a base case, corecursion works synthetically, starting from a base case and building it up, iteratively producing data further removed from a base case.
A total recursive function is a partial recursive function that is defined for every input. Every primitive recursive function is total recursive, but not all total recursive functions are primitive recursive. The Ackermann function A(m,n) is a well-known example of a total recursive function (in fact, provable total), that is not primitive ...
In contemporary use, the term "computable function" has various definitions: according to Nigel J. Cutland, [10] it is a partial recursive function (which can be undefined for some inputs), while according to Robert I. Soare [11] it is a total recursive (equivalently, general recursive) function. This article follows the second of these ...
Folds can be regarded as consistently replacing the structural components of a data structure with functions and values. Lists, for example, are built up in many functional languages from two primitives: any list is either an empty list, commonly called nil ([]), or is constructed by prefixing an element in front of another list, creating what is called a cons node ( Cons(X1,Cons(X2,Cons ...
The primitive recursive functions are a subset of the total recursive functions, which are a subset of the partial recursive functions. For example, the Ackermann function can be proven to be total recursive, and to be non-primitive. Primitive or "basic" functions: Constant functions C k n: For each natural number n and every k