Drawbacks of Recursive function

[A.Rashad]

HI ,
can any one suggest , what are the disadvantages of recursive functions ?

 

[alexxx]

what are the disadvantages of recursive functions ?

The main disadvantage is often that the algorithm may require large amounts of memory if the depth of the recursion is very large.

Recursion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This could be stack or heap space (it depends what it is used in the recursive function). Also there is the possibility to fall into an infinite loop if you call it in a wrong way, which will lead to stack or heap overflow and code hang. Finally, it could sometimes be difficult for someone to understand and analyse the code.

 

[A.Rashad]

Recursion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This could be stack or heap space (it depends what it is used in the recursive function). Also there is the possibility to fall into an infinite loop if you call it in a wrong way, which will lead to stack or heap overflow. Finally, it could sometimes be difficult for someone to understand and analyse the code.

Hi,
Does In recursive functions push and pop operations onto stack happens ? I am confused that , fucnction calls itself , so all the current variables are same in called function , so why to store them on stack ?

 

[alexxx]

Does In recursive functions push and pop operations onto stack happens ? I am confused that , fucnction calls itself , so all the current variables are same in called function , so why to store them on stack ?

Having the same name doesn't mean that they share the same address as well. Otherwise recursive functions could not work.
Every time the function calls itself, the stack size is incremented equally to the variables which must be stored in there by the recursive function. If you want to share the load so that the stack will not be overloaded, you also have the heap option, which means that you 'll be using memory as you go dynamically. You can achieve this with memory allocation.
C dynamic memory allocation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Hope this helps,
Alexandros

 

[A.Rashad]

Nice , Now I got clear ...Actually yesterday INTEL asked me this question in Interview...