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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: Sun, 17 Mar 2024 13:19:29 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On 3/16/2024 1:29 PM, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
> 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...

Gaining the iterative solution from a working recursive solution is the 
fun part!

:^)


> 
> 
>>
>> 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.
>>
>