Recursion is a technique used in programming, including data structure operations, where a function calls itself during its execution. In data structures, recursion is used to solve certain problems that can be solved quite easily, such as Towers of Hanoi, tree traversals, and DFS of Graph. A recursive function solves a particular problem by calling a copy of itself and solving smaller subproblems of the original problem. Many more recursive calls can be generated as and when required. It is essential to provide a certain case to terminate this recursion process, otherwise, an infinite loop will occur.
Recursion is a fundamental concept in data structures that empowers programmers to solve complex problems using an elegant and intuitive approach. A recursive data structure is a data structure that may be divided into miniature or simple cases of itself. For instance, trees are composed of little trees plus leaf nodes while lists can include smaller lists as their components.
Recursion is implemented in programming languages by means of stacks. Whenever a function calls another function or itself as a callee, the caller function transfers execution control to the callee. This transfer process may also involve some data to be passed from the caller to the callee. This activation record keeps the information about local variables, formal parameters, return address, and all information passed to the caller function.
In summary, recursion is a technique used in programming, including data structure operations, where a function calls itself during its execution. It is used to solve certain problems that can be solved quite easily, and it is implemented in programming languages by means of stacks. A recursive data structure is a data structure that may be divided into miniature or simple cases of itself.
