Dynamic View of Recursion

Sometimes thinking about the definition and translating it into Java is all you need to do. But sometimes you need to think about what happens when the program runs. In this dynamic view you think about the sequence of events as the method is actually executing.

Here is a statement from main():

int result = tri.Triangle( 4 );

When a statement like this executes the method Triangle() is said to be activated with an argument of 4. It does some computation and returns a result, 10. Let us picture this as:

QUESTION 11:

Examine the code. Say that Triangle() has been activated with a parameter of 4. The if statement causes the false branch to execute. What happens next?

int Triangle( int N )
{
  if ( N == 1 )
    return 1;
  else
    return N + Triangle( N-1 );
}

Answer:

Dynamic View of Recursion

QUESTION 11: