Recursive Method for Computing the Sum of Numbers
What is the purpose of the following recursive method?
The recursive method is meant to compute the sum of all numbers from 1 to n. What are the issues with the initial implementation of the method?
Answer:
The initial implementation of the recursive method has a few issues. One of the issues is that the method is not stopping at the correct time, leading to StackOverflowErrors when the method is called. Another issue is that the method does not actually sum the values from 1 to n as intended.
The corrected version of the recursive method is as follows:
public int summation(int n) {
if(n == 0) {
return 0;
} else {
return n + summation(n-1);
}
This updated version includes a base case to check if n is equal to 0. If it is, the method returns 0. If n is not 0, the method recursively calls itself with n-1 as the argument.
By using this recursive approach, the method subtracts 1 from n in each recursive call until it reaches 0. At that point, the method starts returning the values of n plus the values returned by the previous recursive calls, effectively summing up all the numbers from 1 to n.
The corrected code prevents StackOverflowErrors by stopping the recursion when n is equal to 0 and accurately computes the sum of all numbers from 1 to n.