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Update introduction.md (#2407)
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ultimatejedi authored Feb 23, 2024
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# Introduction

TODO: add introduction for recursion concept
The ability for something to be defined in terms of itself is called recursion.
Recursive functions are functions that call themselves.

Suppose that you have a function called `recurse`.
This function is recursive if it calls itself inside its body, like this:

```js
function recurse() {
// ...
recurse();
// ...
}
```

A recursive function usually has a condition to stop calling itself and return a value, known as a _base case_.
If a base case is missing, in most cases, because it will call itself indefinitely, it would be able to run forever.
In reality, in most of those situations, you'll end up with a "StackSize error": an error raised by the runtime because the _stack_ of function calls has grown beyond a predefined limit because each recursive call adds to this _stack_ until it returns (and it doesn't).
The message of this error is `Maximum call stack size exceeded`.

```js
function recurse() {
if (baseCondition) {
// stop calling itself
//...
} else {
recurse();
}
}
```

Recursive functions often can be used instead of `for` loops for more succinct code.
For example, take a countdown.
Here's the more intuitive `for` loop approach:

```js
function countDown(fromNumber) {
for (let i = fromNumber; i > 0; i--) {
console.log(i);
}
}

countDown(3); // 3, 2, 1 in separate lines
```

We could solve this using recursion too:

```js
function countDown(fromNumber) {
console.log(fromNumber);
if (fromNumber > 1) {
countDown(fromNumber - 1);
}
}

countDown(3); // same result
```

Here, our base case is when `fromNumber` is 1, in which case we don't call `countDown` again.

Apart from just displaying numbers, recursive functions can be used for more complicated procedures, such as keeping a sum or total.

```js
function sum(n) {
if (n <= 1) {
return n;
}
return n + sum(n - 1);
}

sum(3); // 6
```

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