Ronald, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has a pretty good section about how the recursion happens. It's pretty short, and I think it covers what you are interested in understanding http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-10.html#%_sec_1.1.5
In particular, check out the "Applicative order versus normal order" sub-section and Exercise 1.5. It really helped me understand what's going on. On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 4:53 AM, Marco Morazan <moraz...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 7:37 AM, Ronald Reynolds <bump...@bumpker.com> > wrote: > > I hope I'm not too much of a 'pain in the neck noobie' but what is the > short > > clean answer about what's going on when we > > name a function as part of the definition of itself.. This seems pretty > > esoteric to me. What does the system do? > > > > I am not sure what you mean by esoteric. The simple answer is that you > are applying a function to some input. It just happens to be that the > function being called is the same function that is being evaluated. > The longer answer is that the function is being evaluated in an > environment that contains a definition for itself. Thus, it can call > itself. Others have suggested pointers into the literature for the > finer details of implementation. > > Hope it helps, > > Marco > > > > -- > > Cheers, > > Marco > > ____________________ > Racket Users list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users >
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