Question

I may not understand what the return statement does(I thought it just returned a variable and allowed me to exit the loop). I’m trying to get a better understanding of recursions but this never seems to exit.

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

public class main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Starting..");
        List<Integer> list_to_start = Arrays.asList(new Integer[] {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}); 
        String[] name_of_list_to_start = new String[] {"grapes", "Strawberries", "Raspberries", "Blackberries", "Pineapples", "Oranges", "Prunes", "Pears", "cherries", "Peaches", "Apples"};       
        System.out.println(list_to_start.size());
        counter(list_to_start.size(), list_to_start, name_of_list_to_start);
    }

    private static void counter(int length, List<Integer> list_to_start, String[] name_of_list_to_start) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        if (length == 0) {
            System.out.println("List is empty now");
            for (int i = 0; i>=list_to_start.size(); i++) {
                System.out.println(name_of_list_to_start[i] + " = " + list_to_start.get(i));
            }
            return;
        }   
        Integer x_lenght = (Integer) list_to_start.get(length-1);
        for (int i = 0; i<=5; i++) {
            //System.out.println(i);
            if (length != 0 ) {
                list_to_start.set((length-1), i);
                counter((length-1), list_to_start, name_of_list_to_start);
                list_to_start.set((length-1), 0);
            }
        }
    }
}

Basically what I’m trying to do is, using a recursion, figure out all the combinations of 0-5 for 10 different fruits(this is just for me to learn, not homework..not a student).

Any idea what I’m doing wrong? Why is this program not stopping with the return statement?

update: in case anyone ever has the same problem, here’s the working version of the above code(keeping the broken code so the answers make sense):

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

public class main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Starting..");
        List<Integer> list_to_start = Arrays.asList(new Integer[] {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}); 
        String[] name_of_list_to_start = new String[] {"grapes", "Strawberries", "Raspberries", "Blackberries", "Pineapples", "Oranges", "Prunes", "Pears", "cherries", "Peaches", "Apples"};       
        System.out.println(list_to_start.size());
        counter(list_to_start.size(), list_to_start, name_of_list_to_start);
    }

    private static void counter(int length, List<Integer> list_to_start, String[] name_of_list_to_start) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        if (length == 0) {
            //System.out.println("List is empty now");
            for (int i = 0; i<list_to_start.size(); i++) {
                //(name_of_list_to_start[i] + " = " + list_to_start.get(i));
                int k = i +2;
                int y = k -1;
            }
            //System.out.println("********");
            return;
        }   
        Integer x_lenght = (Integer) list_to_start.get(length-1);
        for (int i = 0; i<=5; i++) {
            //System.out.println(i);
            if (length != 0 ) {
                list_to_start.set((length-1), i);
                counter((length-1), list_to_start, name_of_list_to_start);
                list_to_start.set((length-1), 0);
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Are you sure this is an infinite loop, and not just a really long sequence?

On each level you loop 5 times, branching to another recursion each time. You have 10 levels, so you’ll have a total of 5^10 function calls at the bottom level, or 9,765,625 System.out.println calls!

Your return statement is not in a loop. The return statement exits the current function call… but you have over 10 million function calls here, so it has to return a lot of times.