Question

I had an exam today and there was a question which I don’t really remember the exact code.

But what I do remember that inside the method exampleMethod(int num) there was a line calling the method itself inside the method.

I want to know can a method be called inside it self? because it was a multiple choice question and they wanted from us to find the output.

I hope my question is clear.

Thanks SOF 🙂

Answer 1

Sure it can. When you do that it’s called recursion. Be careful that you have an exit condition or you will get a stack overflow.

for example

int iAmRecursive(int num) {
   if (num > 10) // break out at some condition; i.e. don't recurse
       return num; // return so the recursion doesn't continue

   iAmRecursive(num + 1); // I didn't break out, so continue to recurse.
}

EDIT — here is the same example but with a different break-out, to compliment @Ted’s comment

int iAmRecursive(int num) {
   if (num <= 10) // only continue under certain condition
       iAmRecursive(num + 1); 

   // When I get here, I implicitly break out by not recursing.
}

however I prefer to always be as explicit as possible, so I would explicitly break out as in the first example, if possible.