Xref: utzoo comp.edu:3702 uw.general:1952 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ogicse!milton!iho From: iho@cac.washington.edu (Il Oh) Newsgroups: comp.edu,uw.general Subject: Re: Recursion Summary Message-ID: <9917@milton.u.washington.edu> Date: 25 Oct 90 19:31:26 GMT References: <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp> <9868@milton.u.washington.edu> <9882@milton.u.washington.edu> <9893@milton.u.washington.edu> <9898@milton.u.washington.edu> Sender: news@milton.u.washington.edu Reply-To: iho@akbar.UUCP (Il Oh) Distribution: na Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 30 In article <9898@milton.u.washington.edu> mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) writes: > >It is misleading to claim that "any recursive solution can also be >done in a nonrecursive algorithm without exception." Tail recursion >in a single routine translates neatly into a nonrecursive algorithm. > If I understand the construction of modern CISC processors correctly, most of it is implemented at the microcode level. The hardware level still consists of a collection gates implementing combinatorial and sequential logic. At the level of this paradigm, I'd think there is absolutely no recursion going on. Microcode is still a programming language, and can't be considered the most _basic_ level of the computer. I'm still not completely convinced that you can do something recursively that you can't iteratively since at the most fundamental level of logic (combinatorial and sequential), there is no recursion possible. If you accept my claim that there's no recursion at the fundamental logic level, you must agree that, theoretically, a recursive solution can never be more efficient than an iterative one. Even though I believe my last statement, I also believe that recursive solutions are more elegant and prefer to use them. They just make more logical sense to me. -- "Gosh! You've really got | Il Hwan Oh some nice toys in here." | University of Washington, Tacoma -- Roy Batty, Bladerunner | iho@cac.washington.edu |