Question

I’ve defined a simple factorial function in the REPL:

(defn factorial [n]
  (loop [current n fact 1]
    (if
      (= current 1)
      fact
      (recur (dec current) (* current fact)))))

The function works fine. But when I try to call the function multiple times with a dotimes loop the REPL seems to stop working. I don’t get any results back anymore for whatever expression I type and have to restart the REPL.

I loop with:

(dotimes [x 10]
  (println "Factorial of " x " is " (factorial x)))

I’m using IntelliJ with the La Clojure plugin (Clojure version 1.3.0).

Answer 1

I bet it takes an awfully long time to compute (factorial 0) with that function definition…