Iteration over recursion?

[Sudden Disruption]

Nick,

> you will have cursed the concept to hell and back again. Been there - done that :-(

My point exactly.  Years ago with Pascal I took the recursive approach
way too often with much distress.  I began to learn that if I move
enough stuff out of the loop and set up a context that could easily see
what was getting "re-cursed" (great term), iteration was often much
easier to debug and FAR more effective to execute.

Since those times I can count on one hand the times I've used recursion
- and then only because I was late for lunch and I knew "i" wouldn't
get away from me.

> As someone who was in this area when the Algol versus Fortran wars were

I'll take your word for it.  My start with recursion was Pascal.

> Agreed.  Recursion should be used when it is the right technology to
> clarify the code, and not as a gimmicky, obfuscatory and often dogmatic
> substitute for iteration!

Well put.

> There are algorithms that become almost incomprehensible without recursion, and I
> have implemented a recursion layer in both assembler AND Fortran just to enable me
> to write them without going bonkers.

With a reasonable exception.


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