Recursion HALP

Hey /prog/, I must say my understanding of recursion is shit (never really dealt with recursion in all my days of writing bad code). How should I go about thinking about it?

inb4 flaming: I understand the recursive concept in some contexts, such as when it is used in a factorial function, but when it starts getting more ambiguous (say, exercise 5, ch. 2 from ANSI Common Lisp) it's ugly.

inb4 RECURSE MY ANUS

>>32

"Please define ``exact number''"

A number that isn't an approximation.

"What does your example have to do with variables versus functions, anyway?"

Some languages treat a function as a variable.



Again, you're confused you nigger. Something like the following...

"(* 5 (* 4 (* 3 (* 2 (1)))))"

Can have different meanings depending on the language.

"is merely a simplified representation of the stack, obtainable via iterative substitution. "

You're confusing an expression with its actual variable.