Question

I am reading about list traversals in Algorithms book by RobertSedwick. Function definitions are shown below. It is mentioned that it is possible to have traverse and remove functions can have iterative counter parts, but traverseR cannot have. My question why traverseR cannot have iterative counter part? Is it that if recursive call is not end of function i.e., like in traverse then we cannot have iterative, Is my understanding right?

Thanks for your time and help.

void traverse(link h, void visit(link))
  { 
    if (h == 0) return;
    visit(h); 
    traverse(h->next, visit);
  }
void traverseR(link h, void visit(link))
  { 
    if (h == 0) return;
    traverseR(h->next, visit);
    visit(h); 
  }
void remove(link& x, Item v)
  { 
    while (x != 0 && x->item == v) 
      { link t = x; x = x->next; delete t; }
    if (x != 0) remove(x->next, v); 
  }

Answer 1

traverseR uses the call stack to store pointers to all the nodes of the list, so that they can be accessed in reverse order as the call stack unwinds.

In order to do this without a call stack (i.e. non-recursively), you’ll need some other stack-like data structure to store these pointers in.

The other functions simply work on the current node and move on, with no need to store anything for use after the recursive function call returns. This means that the tail recursion can be replaced with a loop (either by modifying the code or, depending on the compiler, letting it determine that that’s possible and make the transformation itself).