Recursion on Android

[Ali Khalfan]

Hi,

Don't know if anyone ever considered this, but is implementing recusion on android ever a good idea? I know recursion is something that should be avoided whenever possible, but the algorithm I'd like to implement will be a lot easier with recursion.

I was just worried about the stack in general.

[Ulf Dittmer]

I know recursion is something that should be avoided whenever possible

This is just wrong, plain and simple. There's nothing bad about recursion in itself. If the algorithm is recursive (like QuickSort), then, by all means, implement it recursively. Looking at code that implements QuickSort without recursion is just nasty - don't do that! I have held forth on this subject before, you should read those topics for more information: https://coderanch.com/t/422207/Programming/Why-recursion and https://coderanch.com/t/5200/Cattle-Drive/Recursion. There are big differences between linear recursion (might be OK) and tree recursion (probably bad, unless there are definite limits on tree growth).

I don't think that there's anything Android-specific about whether or not to use recursion - yes, mobile devices tend to have less memory available, but if a recursion takes up that much memory it's probably inappropriate to use anyway.