I had an exam today and there was a question which I don't really remember the exact code.
But what I do remember that inside the method exampleMethod(int num) there was a line calling the method itself inside the method.
I want to know can a method be called inside it self? because it was a multiple choice question and they wanted from us to find the output.
I hope my question is clear.
Thanks SOF :)
Sure it can. When you do that it's called recursion. Be careful that you have an exit condition or you will get a stack overflow.
for example
int iAmRecursive(int num) { if (num > 10) // break out at some condition; i.e. don't recurse return num; // return so the recursion doesn't continue iAmRecursive(num + 1); // I didn't break out, so continue to recurse. } EDIT -- here is the same example but with a different break-out, to compliment @Ted's comment
int iAmRecursive(int num) { if (num <= 10) // only continue under certain condition iAmRecursive(num + 1); // When I get here, I implicitly break out by not recursing. } however I prefer to always be as explicit as possible, so I would explicitly break out as in the first example, if possible.
int factorial(n) { return n < 2 ? 1 : n * factorial(n-1); }A nice example of recursion is a method to compute a factorial.
public static long factorial(int i) { if (i == 1) return 1; return factorial(i - 1) * i; } Then invoke it simply like this:
long f = factorial(10); // equals 10! = 10 * 9 * 8 * 7 * 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 (* 1) 
