A goto-like usage of a function

[Bart Nessux]

Peter Hansen wrote:
> Bart Nessux wrote:
> 
>> I understand recursion to be a loop or a loop to be recursion... 
>> however you prefer to look at it. 
> 
> 
> Absolutely not.  Recursion is more like a spiral, rapidly closing
> in on itself until you're trapped in the middle, or maybe a
> swirling whirlpool that will sink your program over time...
> 
> Just because you can use recursion to implement something that
> appears to loop doesn't mean it's a good idea.  Much better
> to get out of that frame of mind...  Recursion does _not_ get
> you back to where you were, as a real loop would.
> 
> The key is to understand that each time you call a function,
> more data is put on the "stack", which has a finite size.
> Basically the context of the calling function is preserved
> when you call a subroutine, including all the local variables,
> plus the "return address" so the interpreter knows where to
> go back to.
> 
> Whether you do it through recursion or some other means,
> if you get too deeply nested you will crash, and even if you
> don't you still have the overhead of "unwinding" all those
> stack frames when you finally return.  It may look like
> it falls off the end of the function, but in fact it is
> actually returning to the previous stack frame, in the place
> just after where the function call was, then it returns from
> there to the previous stack frame, then returns to the previous
> one, each time popping a frame off the stack, all the way up
> to the top of the stack.
> 
> While it might be okay for a trivial script that is just asking
> for user input, it is terribly bad style and you would do well
> to learn to do it differently.
> 
> All IMHO, and theoretical discussions of tail recursion
> notwithstanding.
> 
> -Peter

Thanks to all for detailing how loops and 
recursion differ. I'm going with Tim's loop 
suggestion now that I realize why I shouldn't use 
recursion for this type of thing.