Recursion and the Alternatives
March 9, 2005 Ted Holt
The code for this article is available for download.
Recursion is usually defined as the ability of a process (a program, a subprocedure, and so forth) to call itself. It is a fun topic to write about and a fun technique to use in programming. Recursion often simplifies the effort required to code a task in a computer language. However, recursion is not without its drawbacks. In this article, I hope to help readers determine when recursion is appropriate and to suggest alternatives to use when recursion is not suitable.
An Example of Recursion
To illustrate the concepts that