Concept:

Tail recursion

Headline

A form of single recursion suited for simple recursion removal

Illustration

A tail recursive function f is of the following form:

f(x) =

g(x), if p(x)
f(r(x)), otherwise

for suitable g, p, and r.

The schema variables g, p, and r serve these roles:

p is the condition of the base case.
g is the computation of the base case.
r is the computation for the argument of a recursive application.

We use Language:Java for illustration.

Consider the following tail-recursive formulation of a function for testing ints to be even.

	// Assume n>=0
	public static boolean even(int n) {
		if (n==0) return true;
		else if (n==1) return false;
		else return even(n-2);
	}

The function is tail-recursive, because the function returns right away after the recursive call.

For comparison, the following formulation is not tail-recursive; rather primitive recursion is used.

	// Assume n>=0
	public static boolean even(int n) {
		if (n==0) return true;
		else return !even(n-1);
	}

Every tail-recursive formulation can be easily translated into an iterative one, subject to tail-call elimination.

Metadata

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isA

Single recursion

Backlinks

Concept:Accumulator parameter Concept:Single recursion

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