On 08/21/2010 03:03 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: >> - there must be a condition where the recursion has to stop otherwise >> the routine will continue to call itself infinitely. >> This is called the Base Case > > I agree with this, although I've never heard the name "Base Case" before.
"Base Case" is indeed the formal term. If I recall this term comes from inductive mathematical proofs, upon which recursion is based formally. In my introduction to computer data structures class we spent a lot of time learning about induction and doing inductive proofs. I always hated them until one day when I was trying to teach recursion to a group of freshmen and found myself relying on inductive proofs to demonstrate that recursion indeed works. For the uninitiated, recursion is often thought about too deeply. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
