Expert: Joydeep Bhattacharya - 4/10/2007

Question
When i perform a task using either recursion or iteration(looping) (for Ex: printing of Numbers), which one will be fast and why? What might be the strong points to support?


Answer
Hi Giri

1000 out of 1000 time iteration is better than recursion the reasons are listed below:

1. Calling a function requires some overhead like space and time as we all know that when a function is called the present function is pushed into the stack and the control passes over to the called function this requires more time as well as space.

2. You can't have any infinite recursion for example
void func()
{
 printf("\nHello World")
 func()
} This is not an infinite recursion coz this will print Hello World until the stack overflows so this easily proves that recursion eats more time and space compared to iteration.

Hope that this will clear all your doubts but still in case if you stuck at any place please feel free to contact me.

Regards
Joydeep