Re: How to do actual recursive functions in Lua?

[Romulo <romuloab@...>]

I don't know if I got it correctly, but...

function makereallyrecursive()
    local function fact( n )
        if n > 1 then return n * fact( n - 1 ) end
        return 1
    end
    return fact
end

f = makereallyrecursive()

print( f( 6 ) )

--rb

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
>
>