RECURSION

Recursion

Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in mathematics and computer science, in which it refers to a method of defining functions in which the function being defined is applied within its own definition. Specifically this defines an infinite number of instances, using a finite expression that for some instances may refer to other instances, but ...

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recursion

Noun

  1. The act of recurring.
  2. The act of defining an object (usually a function) in terms of that object itself.
    n! = n × (n − 1)! (for n > 0) or 1 (for n = 0) defines the factorial function using recursion.
  3. The calling of a function from within that same function.
    This function uses recursion to compute factorials.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: recursion
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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