Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers: Deitel Developer Series, Second Edition

7.19. Recursion

It is sometimes useful for methods to call themselves—a recursive method is a method that calls itself either directly or indirectly (i.e., through another method). In this section, we present a simple example of recursion.

Let us first consider recursion conceptually. Recursive problem-solving approaches have a number of elements in common. A recursive method is called to solve a problem. The method actually knows how to solve only the simplest case(s)—the base case(s). If the method is called with a base case, it returns a result. If the method is called with a more complex problem, it divides the problem into two conceptual pieces—a piece that the method knows how to perform (i.e., base case), and a piece that it does not know ...