Re: [phplib] PHP and recursion From: Paul Smith (paul <email protected>)
Date: 05/31/01

Yikes, that is dubious advice. Recursion is one of the things that
makes programming so great! It is a powerful concept, *not* some obscure
or obtuse feature. Casually dismissing it is akin to blowing off, say,
object-orientation, or abstraction. I highly encourage you to explore the
application of recursion further, not less, because it can dramatically
reduce complexity and reveal solutions that are otherwise unattainable.

On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 03:30:41PM +0100, James Johnson wrote:
> Roy
>
> I seem to recall Tobias Ratschiller's book,Web Application
> Development with PHP 4.0 talks about using recursion.
> I think he says it can be useful under certain unusual
> circumstances, but to avoid it generally.
>
> James
>
>
> At 09:07 AM 5/31/01 -0500, Roy Huggins wrote:
> >Hola.
> >
> >My question is not related to PHPLib specifically, for which I apologize. But
> >the members of the list have oft displayed good knowledge of the underworkings
> >in PHP and I'd like to get some insight into something I've run into recently.
> >
> >I recently built a pair of classes whose purpose is to create a tree of
> >TreeNode
> >objects in which each node has one parent, many children and an array of
> >arbitrary data. Performing operations on these trees uses a lot of
> >recursion, of
> >course. Upon testing one function that traverses the tree, creating an
> >array of
> >path illustration strings through the tree (i.e. $paths[0] ==
> >"root:node1:node2", $paths[1] == "root:node1:node4:node7"), PHP quit while
> >complaigning about using too much memory. My script was using a whopping 8
> >megs!
> >
> >I examined my code to see if I was doing something stupid to fill up the
> >RAM and
> >didn't find anything (which, of course, doesn't mean it isn't there. :) But I
> >wanted to get some more info on how PHP deals with recursion and whether
> >or not
> >people have any comments/caveats to express on the issue. I've been spoiled by
> >Scheme and find that recursion is wonderful at times. I'd like to know if it's
> >really a good idea to use it that much in PHP.
> >
> >Thanks in advance!
> >
> >Regards,
> >Roy Huggins
> >roy <email protected>
> >http://www.royhuggins.com/employability
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> James Johnson
> Managing Director
> Publitek New Media Ltd.
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-- 
Paul Smith <paul <email protected>>
InfoTech Designer
Center for Neighborhood Technology
Chicago, Illinois USA

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