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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 ...
Recursion that contains only a single self-reference is known as single recursion, while recursion that contains multiple self-references is known as multiple recursion. Standard examples of single recursion include list traversal, such as in a linear search, or computing the factorial function, while standard examples of multiple recursion ...
For these cases, optimizing tail recursion remains trivial, but general tail-call optimization may be harder to implement efficiently. For example, in the Java virtual machine (JVM), tail-recursive calls can be eliminated (as this reuses the existing call stack), but general tail calls cannot be (as this changes the call stack).
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).
Mutual recursion is very common in functional programming, and is often used for programs written in LISP, Scheme, ML, and similar programming languages. For example, Abelson and Sussman describe how a meta-circular evaluator can be used to implement LISP with an eval-apply cycle. [7] In languages such as Prolog, mutual recursion is almost ...
This example is artificial since this is direct recursion, so overriding the factorial method would override this function; more natural examples are when a method in a derived class calls the same method in a base class, or in cases of mutual recursion. [4] [5]
Roberts (p. 171) gives a related example in Java, using a Class to represent a stack frame. The example given is a solution to the Tower of Hanoi problem wherein a stack simulates polymorphic recursion with a beginning, temporary and ending nested stack substitution structure. [5]
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 ...