In article <4c70344a$0$1659$742ec...@news.sonic.net>, John Nagle <na...@animats.com> wrote: > > Realistically, recursion isn't that important in Python. It's >there if you need it, and sometimes useful, but generally not used >much without good reason. In some functional languages, recursion >is routinely used in place of iteration, but Python isn't built for >that. In Python, most of the use cases for trivial recursion >are better handled with iteration or generators.
Depends how you define "important". It's certainly a critical feature for Python that you *can* use recursion; it's usually the simplest way of walking a tree structure (such as a directory tree). Python would be an extraordinarily limited language if recursion were not available. -- Aahz (a...@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "...if I were on life-support, I'd rather have it run by a Gameboy than a Windows box." --Cliff Wells -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list