Recursion

Chapter 11

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Objectives
•  Describe the concept of recursion
•  Use recursion as a programming tool
•  Describe and use recursive form of
binary search algorithm
•  Describe and use merge sort algorithm

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Basics of Recursion: Outline
•  Basics of Recursion
•  Case Study: Digits to Words
•  How Recursion Works
•  Infinite Recursion
•  Recursive versus Iterative Methods
•  Recursive Methods that Return a Value

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Basics of Recursion
•  A recursive algorithm will have one
subtask that is a small version of the entire
algorithm's task
•  A recursive algorithm contains an
invocation of itself
•  Must be defined correctly else algorithm
could call itself forever or not at all

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Simple Example - Countdown
•  Given an integer value num output all the
numbers from num down to 1
•  Can do this easier and faster with a loop;
the recursive version is an example only
•  First handle the simplest case; the base
case or stopping condition

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Recursive Countdown
•  Next handle larger cases; phrase solution
in terms of a smaller version of the same
problem
•  countDown(3) is to output 3 then output
the result of countDown(2)

View demonstration, listing 11.1

class RecursionCountdown

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Sequence of
Calls
countDown(3)

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Case Study
•  Digits to Words – consider a method which
receives an integer parameter
§  Then it prints the digits of the number as
words
•  Heading

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Case Study
•  Consider this useful private method

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Case Study
•  If number has multiple digits, decompose
algorithm into two subtasks
1.  Display all digits but the last as words
2.  Display last digit as a word
•  First subtask is smaller version of original
problem
§  Same as original task, one less digit

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Case Study
•  Algorithm for
displayAsWords(number)
1. displayAsWords (number after deleting
last digits)
2. System.out.print
(getWordFromDigit(last digit of number
+ " ")

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Case Study
•  View demonstration, listing 11.2
class RecursionDemo
Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 How Recursion Works
•  Figure 11.2a Executing recursive call

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 How Recursion Works
•  Figure 11.2b Executing recursive call

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 How Recursion Works
•  Figure 11.2c Executing recursive call

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Keys to Successful Recursion
•  Must have a branching statement that
leads to different cases
•  One or more of the branches should have
a recursive call of the method
§  Recursive call must us "smaller" version of the
original argument
•  One or more branches must include no
recursive call
§  This is the base or stopping case
JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Infinite Recursion
•  Suppose we leave out the stopping case

•  Nothing stops the method from repeatedly

invoking itself
§  Program will eventually crash when computer
exhausts its resources (stack overflow)

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Recursive Versus Iterative
•  Any method including a recursive call can be
rewritten
§  To do the same task
§  Done without recursion
•  Non recursive algorithm uses iteration
§  Method which implements is iterative method
•  Note iterative version of program, listing 11.3
class IterativeDemo

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Recursive Versus Iterative
•  Recursive method
§  Uses more storage space than iterative
version
§  Due to overhead during runtime
§  Also runs slower
•  However in some programming tasks,
recursion is a better choice, a more
elegant solution

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Recursive Methods that Return a Value

•  Follow same design guidelines as stated

previously
•  Second guideline also states
§  One or more branches includes recursive
invocation that leads to the returned value
•  View program with recursive value
returning method, listing 11.4
class RecursionDemo2

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Recursive Methods that Return a Value
Sample
screen
output

•  Note recursive method NumberOfZeros

§  Has two recursive calls
§  Each returns value assigned to result
§  Variable result is what is returned

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Programming with Recursion: Outline

•  Programming Example: Insisting that User

Input Be Correct
•  Case Study: Binary Search
•  Programming Example: Merge Sort – A
Recursive Sorting Method

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Programming Example
•  Insisting that user input be correct
§  Program asks for a input in specific range
§  Recursive method makes sure of this range
§  Method recursively invokes itself as many
times as user gives incorrect input
•  Dangerous technique – can result in stack overflow
if invalid entries entered repeatedly
•  View program, listing 11.5
class CountDown
JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
Programming Example

Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Case Study
•  Binary Search
§  We design a recursive method to tell whether
or not a given number is in an array
§  Algorithm assumes array is sorted
•  First we look in the middle of the array
§  Then look in first half or last half, depending
on value found in middle

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary Search
•  Draft 1 of algorithm

§  Algorithm requires additional parameters

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary Search
•  Draft 2 of algorithm to search a[first]
through a[last]

§  What if target is not in the array?

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary Search
•  Final draft of algorithm to search
a[first] through a[last] to find
target

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary Search
•  Figure 11.3a Binary search example

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary Search
•  Figure 11.3b Binary search example

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary Search
•  Figure 11.3c Binary search example

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary Search
•  View final code, listing 11.6
class ArraySearcher
•  Note demo program, listing 11.7
class ArraySearcherDemo

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Binary Search

Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Programming Example
•  Merge sort – A recursive sorting method
•  A divide-and-conquer algorithm
§  Array to be sorted is divided in half
§  The two halves are sorted by recursive calls
§  This produces two smaller, sorted arrays
which are merged to a single sorted array

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Merge Sort
•  Algorithm to sort array a

•  View Java implementation, listing 11.8

class MergeSort
JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Merge Sort
•  View demo program, listing 11.9
class MergeSortDemo

Sample
screen
output

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Summary
•  Method with self invocation
§  Invocation considered a recursive call
•  Recursive calls
§  Legal in Java
§  Can make some method definitions clearer
•  Algorithm with one subtask that is smaller
version of entire task
§  Algorithm is a recursive method

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved
 Summary
•  To avoid infinite recursion recursive
method should contain two kinds of cases
§  A recursive call
§  A base (stopping) case with no recursive call
•  Good examples of recursive algorithms
§  Binary search algorithm
§  Merge sort algorithm

JAVA: An Introduction to Problem Solving & Programming, 6th Ed. By Walter Savitch
ISBN 0132162709 © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved