Question 242851 in Javascript Question posted in
A very good W3school tutorial can be found here.

Understanding Recursive Function Behavior in JavaScript – Unexpected Output

Here is the recursion code.

function factorial(n) {
    if (n === 0 || n === 1) {
        return 1;
    } else {
        console.log(factorial( (n - 1) ));
        return n * factorial(n - 1);
    }
}

const number = 5;
const result = factorial(number);
console.log(result);`

Output:
1
2
1
6
1
2
1
24
1
2
1
6
1
2
1
120

#Why does the output include repeated ‘1’ and ‘2’ values?

#How does the recursive function behave in this scenario, and why does it produce this specific output?

#Is this behavior related to how recursion works in JavaScript?

Tags:

3

Answers


  1. 0

    Your log prints another recursion, instead of printing the current step

    function factorial(n) {
    console.log('current value:', n);
    if (n === 0 || n === 1) {
        return 1;
    } else {
        return n * factorial(n - 1);
    }
}

const number = 5;
const result = factorial(number);
console.log("result:", result);
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  2. 0

    Just Remove console.log from the recursive function.

    New Code

    function factorial(n) {
    if (n === 0 || n === 1) {
        return 1;
    } else {
        return n * factorial(n - 1);
    }
}

const number = 5;
const result = factorial(number);
console.log(result);
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  3. 0 
    function countdown(n) {
  if (n <= 0) {
    console.log("Blastoff!");
  } else {
    console.log(n);
    countdown(n - 1);
  }
}
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