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Recursive Subprog Sequence Control

Recursive subprograms are subprograms that call themselves repeatedly, either directly or indirectly. They have a terminating condition that stops further calls and each call brings the program closer to that condition. Recursive calls create a new activation of the subprogram during the first activation's lifetime. Direct recursion is when a function calls itself, while indirect recursion is when functions call each other in a cycle. Tail recursion is when the recursive call is the last thing executed, allowing compilers to optimize it by avoiding stacking new frames.

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275 views4 pages

Recursive Subprog Sequence Control

Recursive subprograms are subprograms that call themselves repeatedly, either directly or indirectly. They have a terminating condition that stops further calls and each call brings the program closer to that condition. Recursive calls create a new activation of the subprogram during the first activation's lifetime. Direct recursion is when a function calls itself, while indirect recursion is when functions call each other in a cycle. Tail recursion is when the recursive call is the last thing executed, allowing compilers to optimize it by avoiding stacking new frames.

Uploaded by

Gurpreet Bansal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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12/16/2020

Recursive Subprograms
 Recursion is the primary control mechanism for repeating sequences of
statements. Recursion in the form of recursive subprogram calls, is one of the
most important sequence-control structure in programming.
 Recursive subprogram is one that calls itself (directly or indirectly) repeatedly
having two properties
 It has a terminating condition or base criteria for which it doesn’t call itself
 Every time it calls itself, it brings closer to the terminating condition
 In Recursive subprogram calls A subprogram may call any other subprogram
including A itself, a subprogram B that calls A or so on.
 The only difference between a recursive call and an ordinary call is that the
recursive call creates a second activation of the subprogram during the
lifetime of the first activation.
 Both CIP and CEP are used to implement recursive subprogram

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12/16/2020

Types of Recursion
 Direct Recursion
A function is called a recursive function if it calls itself again and again .
void RecFun()
{
// Some code....
RecFun();
// Some code...
}

Indirect Recursive Function


 Indirect recursion is when a function calls another function and the called
function in turn calls the calling function.
 That is if function 1 calls function 2 and then function 2 calls function 1
resulting in a cycle.

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Example – Indirect Recursion


 // An example of indirect recursion
void RecFun1() {
// Some code...
RecFun2();
// Some code...
}
Void RecFun2()
{ // Some code...
RecFun1();
// Some code...
}

Tail Recursion
 A recursive function is tail recursive when recursive call is the last thing
executed by the function.
 For example the following C++ function print() is tail recursive.
 Example
void print(int n)
{
if (n < 0) return;
cout << " " << n;

// The last executed statement is recursive call


print(n-1);
}

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Tail Recursion- Benefit


 The tail recursive functions considered better than non tail recursive functions as
tail-recursion can be optimized by compiler.
 The idea used by compilers to optimize tail-recursive functions is simple, since the
recursive call is the last statement, there is nothing left to do in the current
function, so saving the current function’s stack frame is of no use

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