Cutting legal loops
Donald H. Berman · 1989
riverrun, past EVE and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Enviorns.*****A way a lone a last a loved a long the Joyce, FINNEGANS WAKE 1, 628 (1955)Recursion is the act of defining an object or solving a problem in terms of itself. A careless recursion can lead to an infinite regress. We avoid the bottomless circularity inherent in this tactic by demanding that the recursion be stated in terms of some “simpler” object, and by providing the definition or solution of some trivial base case. Properly used, recursion is a powerful problem solving technique, both in artificial domains like mathematics and computer programming, and in real life. Friedman & Felleisen,THE LITTLE LISPER ix (1986)