Question

I need to write a recursive function that utilizes just two string methods, .empty? and .chop.
No, I can’t use .length (Can you tell it’s homework yet?)

So far I’m stuck on writing the function itself, I passed it the string, but I am unsure on how to recursively go through the characters with the .chop string method. Would I just have a counter? Syntax for this thing seems tricky to me.

 def stringLength(string)
  if string.empty?
     return 0
  else
     .....
  end
 end

I wish I could put more down, but this is what I’m stuck at.

Answer 1

return 1 + stringLength(string.chop)

Thats your missing line. Here is an example of how this will work:

stringLength("Hello") = 1 + stringLength("Hell")
stringLength("Hell")  = 1 + stringLength("Hel")
stringLength("Hel")   = 1 + stringLength("He")
stringLength("He")    = 1 + stringLength("H")
stringLength("H")     = 1 + stringLength("")
stringLength("")      = 0