Recursion

• Recursion is a fundamental programming

technique that can provide an elegant solution
certain kinds of problems

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Recursive Thinking
• A recursive definition is one which uses the word
or concept being defined in the definition itself

• When defining an English word, a recursive

definition is often not helpful

• But in other situations, a recursive definition can

be an appropriate way to express a concept

• Before applying recursion to programming, it is

best to practice thinking recursively

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Recursive Definitions
• Consider the following list of numbers:

24, 88, 40, 37

• Such a list can be defined as follows:

A LIST is a: number
or a: number comma LIST

• That is, a LIST is defined to be a single number, or

a number followed by a comma followed by a LIST

• The concept of a LIST is used to define itself

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Recursive Definitions
• The recursive part of the LIST definition is
used several times, terminating with the
non-recursive part:
number comma LIST
24 , 88, 40, 37

number comma LIST

88 , 40, 37

number comma LIST

40 , 37

number
37

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Infinite Recursion
• All recursive definitions have to have a non-
recursive part

• If they didn't, there would be no way to terminate

the recursive path

• Such a definition would cause infinite recursion

• This problem is similar to an infinite loop, but the

non-terminating "loop" is part of the definition
itself

• The non-recursive part is often called the base

case

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Recursive Definitions
• N!, for any positive integer N, is defined to be the
product of all integers between 1 and N inclusive

• This definition can be expressed recursively as:

1! = 1
N! = N * (N-1)!

• A factorial is defined in terms of another factorial

• Eventually, the base case of 1! is reached

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Recursive Definitions

5!
120
5 * 4!
24
4 * 3!
6
3 * 2!
2
2 * 1!
1

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Recursive Programming
• A Function can invoke itself; if set up that way, it
is called a recursive function

• The code of a recursive function must be

structured to handle both the base case and the
recursive case

• As with any function call, when the function

completes, control returns to the function that
invoked it (which may be an earlier invocation of
itself)

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Recursive Programming
• Consider the problem of computing the sum of all
the numbers between 1 and any positive integer N

• This problem can be recursively defined as:

N N −1 N −2

∑i
i =1
= N + ∑i
i =1
= N + N −1 + ∑i
i =1
N −3
= N + N −1 + N − 2 + ∑i
i =1
o

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Recursive Programming
// This function returns the sum of 1 to num
int sum (int num)
{
int result;

if (num == 1)
result = 1;
else
result = num + sum (n-1);

return result;
}

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Recursive Programming
result = 6
main
sum(3)

result = 3
sum
sum(2)

result = 1
sum
sum(1)

sum

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Recursive Programming
• Note that just because we can use recursion to
solve a problem, doesn't mean we should

• For instance, we usually would not use recursion

to solve the sum of 1 to N problem, because the
iterative version is easier to understand

• However, for some problems, recursion provides

an elegant solution, often cleaner than an iterative
version

• You must carefully decide whether recursion is the

correct technique for any problem

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Indirect Recursion
• A function invoking itself is considered to be
direct recursion

• A function could invoke another function, which

invokes another, etc., until eventually the original
function is invoked again
• For example, function m1 could invoke m2, which
invokes m3, which in turn invokes m1 again

• This is called indirect recursion, and requires all

the same care as direct recursion

• It is often more difficult to trace and debug

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Indirect Recursion

m1 m2 m3

m1 m2 m3

m1 m2 m3

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Towers of Hanoi
• The Towers of Hanoi is a puzzle made up of three
vertical pegs and several disks that slide on the
pegs

• The disks are of varying size, initially placed on

one peg with the largest disk on the bottom with
increasingly smaller ones on top

• The goal is to move all of the disks from one peg

to another under the following rules:

We can move only one disk at a time

We cannot move a larger disk on top of a smaller one

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Towers of Hanoi

Original Configuration Move 1

Move 2 Move 3

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Towers of Hanoi

Move 4 Move 5

Move 6 Move 7 (done)

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Towers of Hanoi
• An iterative solution to the Towers of Hanoi is
quite complex

• A recursive solution is much shorter and more

elegant

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Towers of Hanoi
#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h>

void transfer(int,char,char,char);

int main()
{
int n;
printf("Recursive Solution to Towe of Hanoi Problem\n");
printf("enter the number of Disks");
scanf("%d",&n);
transfer(n,'L','R','C');
getch();
return 0;
}
void transfer(int n,char from,char to,char temp)
{
if (n>0)
{
transfer(n-1,from,temp,to); /* Move n-1 disk from origin to temporary */
printf("Move Disk %d from %c to %c\n",n,from,to);
transfer(n-1,temp,to,from); /* Move n-1 disk from temporary to origin */
}
return;
}
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Drawbacks of Recursion
Regardless of the algorithm used, recursion has two
important drawbacks:

Function-Call Overhead

Memory-Management Issues

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Eliminating Recursion — Tail
Recursion
A special kind of recursion is tail recursion.

Tail recursion is when a recursive call is the last thing a
function does.
Tail recursion is important because it makes the
recursion → iteration conversion very easy.

That is, we like tail recursion because it is easy to
eliminate.

In fact, tail recursion is such an obvious thing to optimize
that some compilers automatically convert it to iteration.

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Eliminating Recursion — Tail
Recursion
For a void function, tail recursion looks like this:

void foo(TTT a, UUU b)

{
…
foo(x, y);
}

For a function returning a value, tail recursion looks like this:

SSS bar(TTT a, UUU b)

{
…
return bar(x, y);
}

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A tail-recursive Factorial Function
We will use an auxiliary function to rewrite factorial as tail-
recursive:

int factAux (int x, int result)

{
if (x==0) return result;
return factAux(x-1, result * x);
}
int tailRecursiveFact( int x)
{
return factAux (n, 1);
}

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