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From: iho@cac.washington.edu (Il Oh)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,uw.general
Subject: Re: Recursion Summary
Message-ID: <9868@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 24 Oct 90 23:07:51 GMT
References: <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp>
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Reply-To: iho@akbar.UUCP (Il Oh)
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In article <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp> rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) writes:
>
> 
>As many people warned me, recursion is just a useful tool.  Almost anything
>that can be done recursively can be done iteratively.  As well, business
>folks in general don't often come up with much need for recursion, so they
>have trouble believing that it has "real world" applications.  So it goes.
> 
Correction.  _Anything_ (not almost) that can be done recursively can be done
iteratively.  At the machine level, there is no such thing as recursion, so
when you write recursive code, the compiler produces code that can be executed
by a non-recursing CPU.  I'm pretty sure I'm right about this.

Still, recursive solutions are more elegant, and I understand them better.
--
  "Gosh!  You've really got          |    Il Hwan Oh
     some nice toys in here."        |    University of Washington, Tacoma
         -- Roy Batty, Bladerunner   |    iho@cac.washington.edu
                                     |