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Recursive drawing of a Sierpiński Triangle through turtle graphics. In computer science, recursion is a method of solving a computational problem where the solution depends on solutions to smaller instances of the same problem. [1] [2] Recursion solves such recursive problems by using functions that call themselves from within their own code ...
A classic example of recursion is the definition of the factorial function, given here in Python code: def factorial ( n ): if n > 0 : return n * factorial ( n - 1 ) else : return 1 The function calls itself recursively on a smaller version of the input (n - 1) and multiplies the result of the recursive call by n , until reaching the base case ...
An equivalent definition states that a partial recursive function is one that can be computed by a Turing machine. 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.
This mutually recursive definition can be converted to a singly recursive definition by inlining the definition of a forest: t: v [t[1], ..., t[k]] A tree t consists of a pair of a value v and a list of trees (its children). This definition is more compact, but somewhat messier: a tree consists of a pair of one type and a list of another, which ...
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.
Left recursion often poses problems for parsers, either because it leads them into infinite recursion (as in the case of most top-down parsers) or because they expect rules in a normal form that forbids it (as in the case of many bottom-up parsers [clarification needed]). Therefore, a grammar is often preprocessed to eliminate the left recursion.
Tail recursion (or tail-end recursion) is particularly useful, and is often easy to optimize in implementations. Tail calls can be implemented without adding a new stack frame to the call stack . Most of the frame of the current procedure is no longer needed, and can be replaced by the frame of the tail call, modified as appropriate (similar to ...
This definition is elegant and easy to work with abstractly (such as when proving theorems about properties of trees), as it expresses a tree in simple terms: a list of one type, and a pair of two types. This mutually recursive definition can be converted to a singly recursive definition by inlining the definition of a forest: