loop(20);
function loop(i:int):void {
if (i < 0) return;
trace(i);
loop(i - 1);
}
/* outputs:
20
19
18
17
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
*/
This snippet uses a recursive function to count down from some number. Recursion is pretty useless in actionscript, it will eventually cause an error… If you were to try to countdown from a higher number it would choke pretty fast…
Been writing haskell lately so I have recursion on the brain.
It might be a good idea to change:
if (i == -1)
to:
if (i < 0) Otherwise loop(-2) will infinitely recurse.
that would indeed be a good idea 😀 (updated)
nice way to get a stack overflow error if i is too big
I`m not sure, but I think, “for” or “while” loops will work much faster becouse of bytecode architecture….
In this case this snippet is an bad case of usage of language structures.
Hey Peko… I completely agree with you.. recursion is not a good idea in ActionScript… it works wonders in other languages though…
To quote this post (see above) : “Recursion is pretty useless in actionscript”
also peko, see the warning page
https://actionsnippet.com/?page_id=167
Haskell, as a functional language, is heavily optimized for tail recursion, while imperative languages tend to have optimized looping constructs. Also, Haskell compiles to machine code.