Recursion can be a tough concept to grasp regardless of the language you decided to program in. In order to help developers who find themselves struggling with the concept (myself included), I’ve broken down the concept into five simple questions you’ll need to answer in order to write solid recursive functions (inspired by the folks over at CodeCademy).

Each of these questions breaks down a simple JavaScript function designed to find the factoral of a given number:

function factoral(n) {
    if(n === 0) {
        return 1;
    }
    if(n < 0) {
        throw "You cannot get the factoral of a negative number";
    }
    return n * factoral(n-1);
}

What is/are the base case(s)?

In recursion, a base case can be best defined as scenarios where the function returns a value without recursing. In the factoral function example, the base case would be when n equals 1.

What is/are the recursive case(s)?

A recursive case is a scenario in which the function calls itself (recurses). In the example function, this occurs whenever n is greater than 1.

Have I included any other necessary termination condition(s)?

This question is meant to be a sanity check for the developer. Basically, we want to check and see if there are any other conditions that may cause the function to terminate or fail that we haven’t yet accounted for. In the factoral example, this extra condition would be the check against a negative number that throws an exception.

Do the statements in the function lead to the base case?

When writing a recursive function, you want to make sure that every recursive call brings you closer and closer to the base case and, therefore, the function returning a single value. In this example, we’re subtracting 1 from n every time we call factoral which leads us closer and closer to our base case of 0.

Does the recursion build on the base case until the desired result is

returned by the function?

This question can be a little tricky to answer depending on the complexity of the function you’re writing. Basically, we want to make sure that each call of the function adds to the result of the previous call. In the factoral example, we’re multiplying n By the value of its last iteration through the function.

Apply the Questions

Now it’s your turn to give it a try. I want you to create a gist and breakdown a recursive function using the five questions listed above and post a link to it in the comments. Here’s some suggestions for function ideas:

1. Recursively print a nested list of items
2. Find all permutations of a given string
3. Reverse a string

I look forward to seeing your examples!