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Ruby

Petr Gazarov
Petr Gazarov
486 Points
Posted by Petr Gazarov
Petr Gazarov
486 Points

Recursion. Help!

Any recommended videos on recursion? Just can't get my head around the concept. Doesn't matter which language.

1 Answer

Sage Elliott
Sage Elliott
30,003 Points
Sage Elliott
Sage Elliott
30,003 Points

I don't have a video but I can attempt to explain from what I know. And I would encourage you to look up as well for I could be somewhat off... My understanding is: Recursion functions call themselves until a specified condition is met. so each time it calls itself it should be moving towards that condition, such as adding or subtracting to a variable.

This example was taken from a stackoverflow post I think the post may have put it in better words as well so please check it out!

def countdown(n)
  return if n.zero? # base case
  puts n
  countdown(n-1)    # getting closer to base case 
end               

countdown(5)
5
4
3
2
1

Does that make any sense to you?