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From: "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: filling area by color atack safety
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2024 13:29:26 -0700
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On 3/16/2024 1:02 PM, Malcolm McLean wrote:
> On 16/03/2024 18:21, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> writes:
>>> On 16/03/2024 13:55, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>>>> Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> Recursion make programs harder to reason about and prove correct.
>>>>
>>>> Are you prepared to offer any evidence to support this astonishing
>>>> statement or can we just assume it's another Malcolmism?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Example given. A recursive algorithm which is hard to reason about and
>>
>> Perhaps hard for _you_ to reason about.  That doesn't
>> generalize to every other programmer that might read that
>> code.
>>
>>
>  From experience this one blows the stack, but not always. Sometimes 
> it's OK to use.

Blowing the stack is not good at all. However, sometimes, I consider a 
recursive algorithm easier to understand. So, I build it first... Get it 
working, _then_ think about an iterative solution...


> 
> Since you can reason about it so easily, you can tell the others when 
> you're OK and when you are not, in a handy intuitive way so that someone 
> thinking of implementing it will know.
>