Re: How to do actual recursive functions in Lua?

["Alex Davies" <alex.mania@...>]

Or possibly simpler:

do
 local function _fact(n)
       if n > 1 then return n * _fact( n - 1 ) end
       return 1
   end
 fact = _fact
end

- Alex

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 12:01 PM, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> Ok, call me stupid, but a recursive function in my book would be one
> that can call itself and is self-contained.
>
> If I do something like
>
> function fact(n)
> if n>1 then
> return n*fact(n-1)
> end
> return 1
> end
>
> then this is _not_ a self-contained recursive function, since it relies
> on calling itself through the variable named fact. If I do
>
> factx=fact
> fact=nil
> print(factx(6))
>
> this does not work. We had some previous discussion about recursive
> stuff here (with some fairly esoteric code partly), but what would most
> likely be the _simplest_ way to get a self-contained recursive function?
>
> --
> David Kastrup