Recursion Glossary

Browse 8 recursion terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

8 Recursion Terms

Backtracking: Backtracking is an algorithmic technique that incrementally builds candidates for a solution and abandons a candidate (backtracks) as soon as it determines...
Divide and Conquer: An algorithmic paradigm that recursively divides a problem into smaller subproblems, solves them independently, and combines the results. Unlike dynamic...
Eating Your Own Tail: A situation where a system or process ends up consuming its own output as input in a destructive feedback loop. Also called an ouroboros pattern.
Infinite Recursion Slang: Informal talk around self-calling logic that never bottoms out, often extended metaphorically to meetings, approvals, and process loops. In engineering slang,...
StackOverflowException: The runtime error thrown when the call stack exceeds its limit, almost always caused by infinite recursion. The error that gave the website its name and gives...
Tail Call: A function call that occurs as the last action of a function, allowing the compiler to reuse the current stack frame instead of allocating a new one. Enables...
Tail Call Optimization: A compiler optimization that reuses the current function's stack frame for a recursive call in tail position, converting recursion into iteration. Prevents...
Tail Call Optimization: A compiler optimization that reuses the current stack frame for a recursive call that is the last operation in a function, preventing stack overflow on deep...