On Aug 31, 2010, at 5:32 PM, Paul McNett wrote:
> I agree, by the way, with using recursion for tree traversal. But you may
> have to put
> checks in your recursive function to catch possible infinite recursion:
That's no different than iterative approaches to the same data. Both
will create infinite loops with circular data instead of treed data. That's not
a knock against either approach; it's a knock against whomever set up the data
in a circular fashion.
> Obviously, you are aware of all this, but it wouldn't be fair to blame the
> programmer
> of the recursive function of misusing recursion if an infinite-loop-infested
> tree
> were thrown at it one day.
Well, the point is that the data is no longer a tree.
> Recursion is awesome. Powerful and simple. But once you add checks in them to
> deal
> with edge-cases, recursive functions can get unwieldy pretty quickly. With
> great
> power comes great responsibility I guess!
For those who detest recursion, please name one algorithm that is
extremely powerful and perfectly safe, whether in the hands of a novice
programmer, or when applied to something it is not designed to handle. For that
is what the arguments you've presented against recursion amount to.
-- Ed Leafe
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