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Recursion

Recursion is a programming technique where a function calls itself to solve smaller subproblems, similar to mathematical induction. It is crucial for recursive programs to have a terminating condition to avoid infinite loops and stack overflow. The document illustrates recursion through the Tower of Hanoi problem and provides code examples for both the Tower of Hanoi and binary search algorithms.

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3 views

Recursion

Recursion is a programming technique where a function calls itself to solve smaller subproblems, similar to mathematical induction. It is crucial for recursive programs to have a terminating condition to avoid infinite loops and stack overflow. The document illustrates recursion through the Tower of Hanoi problem and provides code examples for both the Tower of Hanoi and binary search algorithms.

Uploaded by

aryaandutkiandtani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Recursion

Recursion is nothing but a function invoking itself. The notion of recursion is


very similar to mathematical induction where in the inductive hypothesis you
assume the problem to be true for a smaller sized sub problem without
questioning. The idea of recursion is to break the original problem into smaller
sized sub problem that you solve recursively and you assume the solution that
you obtained are correct without questioning. Only thing that you have to ensure
in a recursive program is to merge the solution of the smaller sized problem
properly to obtain the correct solution of the original problem.

During recursive call the present environment of recursion is pushed into the
stack of activation records and these are popped out of the stack in the
backtracking phase of recursion. If there is no backtracking part, i.e., the recursive
call is the last statement in the recursive function we call that recursion as tail
recursion.

Original Function 1st Recursion 2nd Recursion

Recursive call-1 Recursive-call -2

Backtrack-2 Backtrack-1

One important point to remember is that any recursive program has to have a
terminating condition similar to the basis case of mathematical induction.
Otherwise the program would recursively call itself indefinitely and would not
terminate. This would overflow the stack of activation records and you will get
run time error message.
We can easily convert a recursive program into an iterative program using stack
data structure. In case of tail end recursion even this stack is also not required.
We will show the first recursive program for a problem named Tower of Hanoi.
In this problem there are n disks and 3 towers namely a, b, c. You have to move
these n disks that are initially on tower a to tower c using b as the intermediate
tower. There are 2 conditions that has to be satisfied:
1. You can move only one disk at a time.

2. You cannot place a larger sized disk over a smaller sized disk.

To solve this problem using recursion we have to break the original problem
into 3 smaller sized sub problems:
1. Move (n-1) disks from tower a to tower b using c as the intermediate tower.

2. Move the nth or the largest disk from tower a to tower c.

3. Move (n-1) disks from tower b to tower c using a as the intermediate


tower.

The code for this program is as follows:

#include<stdio.h>
int tower_of_hanoi(int n, int a, int b, int c)
{
if(n>0)
{
tower_of_hanoi(n-1, a, c, b);
printf("move disk %d from tower %d to tower
%d\n", n, a, c);
tower_of_hanoi(n-1, b, a, c);
}
else return(0);
}
int main()
{
int n;
printf("Enter the number of disks\n");
scanf("%d", &n);
tower_of_hanoi(n, 1, 2, 3);
return(0);
}
Time Complexity Analysis:
Total number of recursive calls in this program is the total number of moves and
can be estimated using the following recurrence:

T(n) = 2T(n-1) + 1 = 2[2T(n-2) +1] + 1 = 22T(n-2) + 2 + 1 = 2[2[2T(n-3) + 1] +


1] + 1 = 23T(n-3) + 22+2+1 = 2(n-1) +2(n-2) + … + 2+1 = 2n -1 [Since T(1) = 1]

Another recursive program for binary search that we have discussed earlier
using iteration is described below:

#include<stdio.h>
#define MAX 1000
int binary_search(int key, int low, int high, int
A[])
{
int mid;

if(low<high){

mid = (low+high)/2;
if(A[mid]==key) return(mid);
else if (A[mid] < key) binary_search(key,
mid+1, high, A);
else binary_search(key, low, mid-1, A);
}
else return(-1);
}

int main()
{
char c;
int key, i, n, index, A[MAX];

printf("Enter the number of array elements\n");


scanf("%d", &n);

printf("Enter the array elements\n");

for(i=0; i<n; i++)


scanf("%d", &A[i]);

printf("Enter the key value\n");


scanf("%d", &key);

index = binary_search(key, 0, n-1, A);

if(index<0) printf("unsuccessful search\n");


else printf("The key is present in index location
= %d\n", index);

c=getchar();
return(0);

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