On May 20, 12:00 am, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard- newsgro...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Indeed. And the algorithms that are employed to perform the operations > so described are recursive. Actually, they almost never are. Iterative algorithms are almost always used to avoid a stack explosion. However, the terminology is still correct. When you are asked if the operation should be performed recursively, it is asking whether you want the same effect you would get if a recursive algorithm was used. Essentially, there is an implied 'as if' rule. The user doesn't care how the program accomplishes the task, the user just needs to specify what task the program should accomplish. This is common throughout the discipline of programming. (Most standards have an explicit 'as if' rule that says that when the standard specifies X, they don't literally mean that X must happen. They mean the behavior must be indistinguishable from X happening.) DS -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
