Question

1.what is a base condition of recursive function?

2. why is the base condition of recursive function important?

Answer 1

Here is an example first and answers later:

int factorial(int n){

if (n==1){

return 1;

}

return n*factorial(n-1);

}

The above function is a recursive function because the function is calling it self.

Because the function is calling itself there should be a condition where it needs to stop calling itself.

1) A base condition is a recurrence breaking condition of a recursive function

example: in the above factorial program the base condition is when n=1 we are stopping the recursive call and returning 1.

2) If a base condition was not set properly the function will not stop calling itself forever and stack memory will fill and the program will crash. So we should specify a base condition properly.