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recursion
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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English
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin recursiō (“the act of running back or again, return”), from recurrō (“run back; return”), from re- (“back, again”) + currō (“run”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ɹɪˈkɜː(ɹ)ʒən/
Audio (General American): (file) Audio (Southern England): (file) - Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)ʒən
Noun
recursion (countable and uncountable, plural recursions)
- The act of recurring.
- (mathematics) The act of defining an object (usually a function) in terms of that object itself.
- n! = n × (n − 1)! (for n > 0) or 1 (for n = 0) defines the factorial function using recursion.
- 1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 128:
- However, we have still not achieved our goal of devising a finite set of rules which will generate an infinite set of sentence structures. In order to achieve this goal, we need to allow for the fact that natural languages typically have the property that they allow potentially infinite recursion of particular structures.
- (programming) The invocation of a procedure from within itself.
- This function uses recursion to compute factorials.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
the act of recurring
in mathematics
|
the invocation of a procedure from within itself
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
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