Last updated on Nov 10, 2023
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1
Use a base case
2
Limit the depth
3
Use tail recursion
4
Use iteration
5
Here’s what else to consider
Recursion is a powerful technique that allows you to solve problems by breaking them down into smaller and simpler subproblems. However, recursion can also cause a stack overflow, which is a runtime error that occurs when the call stack exceeds its limit. The call stack is a data structure that stores the information about the active functions in a program, such as their parameters, return values, and local variables. Each recursive call adds a new frame to the stack, and each return removes a frame from the stack. If the recursion is too deep or infinite, the stack can run out of space and crash the program. How can you prevent this from happening? Here are some best practices for avoiding stack overflow when using recursion.
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1 Use a base case
A base case is a condition that terminates the recursion and returns a value without making any further recursive calls. A base case is essential for preventing infinite recursion, which would fill up the stack indefinitely. You should always check for a base case before making any recursive calls, and make sure that your recursive calls are getting closer to the base case. For example, if you are writing a recursive function to calculate the factorial of a number, your base case would be n == 0 or n == 1, and your recursive call would be n * factorial(n - 1).
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Liam O'Donnell
Software Engineer • Sharing tech industry insights & Teaching you how to build software
I was helped by thinking about base cases as the “finish line” of a recursive function.What is the ultimate point you are trying to reach before you have everything you need.Recursive call = Keep goingBase case return = The finish line
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Athul Sreenivasan
Turning bugs into features! System Design & Architecture | Software Engineer | JS ❤️
"USE OF GLOBAL VARIABLE", Adding breakers on top of execution,Use of optimisation techniques such as tail recursion or iterations
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Yogesh D.
Co-Founder, CTO, Seed-Inventor, PhD in AI & ML, CSM®
Set a Base Case:Always define a clear base case for your recursive function to stop calling itself. Without a base case, or if the base case is never reached due to incorrect logic, the recursion will continue indefinitely, leading to a stack overflow.
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Nestor Urquiza
Securely Automating Organization Processes
I do not like the term "best practices" because usually it actually means "most agreed practices". That said, in order to prevent stack overflow when using recursion one should look into the following:1. Is your data set limited in size? If the data set is not supposed to ever grow beyond a certain point and your automated tests tell you that you can scale well (concurrency accounted for) then recursion is fine.2. Does your compiler/interpreter provide stack optimization features? The stack could be handled in such a way that a reduced and controlled amount of data is always kept in it. Most popular languages as of 2023 lack such a feature.3. Is it a no? Then your remaining options are iteration or recursive partitioning/decomposition.
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2 Limit the depth
Another way to prevent stack overflow is to limit the depth of the recursion, which is the number of recursive calls that can be made before returning a value. You can do this by using a parameter or a global variable that keeps track of the current depth, and stops the recursion when it reaches a certain threshold. This can help you avoid exceeding the stack limit, but it also means that you might not get the correct or complete result for some inputs. For example, if you are writing a recursive function to traverse a binary tree, you can use a depth parameter that increments by one for each recursive call, and returns when it reaches the maximum depth.
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Philip Chung
Software Developer
Avoid using a global variable. If the recursive function can be called from multiple places concurrently, a global variable won't work.Edited in response to another contribution: Yes, reentrancy is a separate problem that isn't directly related to recursion, but I still think it's worth suggesting to avoid global variables (unless you're working in a limited environment that can't handle the added parameter).
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Stephen F. Heffner
President / Owner at XTRAN, LLC
A global variable can only be a problem if it messes up the limiting condition; otherwise the fact that it's global is irrelevant. What you're discussing is re-entrancy, which is a separate problem not connected with recursion.
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Charu P.
Electrical and Electronics Engineer | Software Engineer
Choosing the appropriate limit of depth can be challenging. Setting it too high might still risk a stack overflow, while setting it too low may truncate the recursion prematurely, affecting the quality of the result.
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Yogesh D.
Co-Founder, CTO, Seed-Inventor, PhD in AI & ML, CSM®
Limit the Depth of Recursion:Manually setting a limit to the depth of recursion can prevent stack overflows. This involves tracking the depth of recursion and returning or throwing an error once a maximum depth is reached.
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3 Use tail recursion
Tail recursion is a special kind of recursion where the recursive call is the last thing that the function does before returning. This means that there is no need to store any information on the stack for the current function, since it has nothing else to do after the recursive call. Some compilers or interpreters can optimize tail recursion by reusing the same stack frame for each recursive call, instead of creating a new one. This can reduce the stack space and prevent stack overflow. However, not all languages or implementations support tail recursion optimization, so you should check before relying on it. For example, if you are writing a recursive function to calculate the sum of an array, you can use tail recursion by passing the sum as a parameter and updating it with each recursive call.
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Max Hinkley
Better Firmware, Faster | Safety-Critical Systems | Secure Coding | Lateral-thinking Integrator | Consultant
The article says it, but the point is worth emphasizing: While you can structure your recursive function to take advantage of tail recursion; it is an optimization technique done by the compiler that is outside of the developer's control. On the other hand, structuring your code this way can still help somewhat because most compilers will optimize to not preserve stack for variables that are beyond there final use when the recursive call is made.
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See AlsoThread Stack Size - Win32 apps
4 Use iteration
Sometimes, the best way to prevent stack overflow is to avoid recursion altogether and use iteration instead. Iteration is a technique that uses loops to repeat a set of instructions until a condition is met. Iteration does not use the call stack, so it does not have the risk of stack overflow. However, iteration can be more complex or less elegant than recursion for some problems, especially those that have a recursive structure or logic. For example, if you are writing a recursive function to reverse a linked list, you can use iteration by using a pointer and a loop to traverse the list and modify the links.
Recursion is a useful tool for solving problems, but it can also cause problems if not used carefully. By following these best practices, you can prevent stack overflow and write recursive functions that are efficient and reliable.
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Adrian Del Campo
Senior Software Engineer @ Scopely
The best way to avoid having problems with recursion is essentially not using recursion. Most of the times you can just loop through your hierarchy and get it done. It will be more efficient as you don't need to build contexts on each method call, you will be able to parallelize if your problem allows to it, and you will avoid problems like stack overflows.In case you cannot serialize your problem and therefore make it iterable, you need to be 100 % sure your base condition is good enough, and maybe keep track of visited items, so you can (maybe) avoid going through all the items reaching the limit.
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Stephen F. Heffner
President / Owner at XTRAN, LLC
Max -- nope. What has been proven is that any _tail-recursive_ algorithm can also be solved iteratively. If it isn't tail-recursive, there may well be NO iterative equivalent.Later -- thanks for the addition of the article link. Very interesting! As I mentioned below, I do a lot of computer language manipulation, and the recursive nature of almost all such grammars dictates a recursive approach for clarity if nothing else. (Interestingly, Backus Naur Form or BNF, which I execute at parse time, is itself recursively defined!)
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Mark McGuire
Data Scientist at IBM with Quantum Computing experience
IF POSSIBLE. "Sometimes" is the key word. (although I would prefer to use "Most of the time").In my experience the only time this can't be done is in somewhat contrived problems. I hear scientific computing sometimes runs into this though.
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5 Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?
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Yogesh D.
Co-Founder, CTO, Seed-Inventor, PhD in AI & ML, CSM®
Use Non-Recursive Data Structures:For example, instead of using recursive function calls, you can manage the call stack manually using a stack data structure, which can sometimes be more efficient and less risky.
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Aman K Saini
Senior Frontend Engineer @ Jimdo (Remote) // Ex Expedia // Ex Cvent
Sometimes nothings works and the only solution is to add a time-based circuit breaker on top of execution. this limits the overall abuse of recursion and we can mix it with telemetry logging data to prevent over abuse of recursion
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Stephen F. Heffner
President / Owner at XTRAN, LLC
I deal with parsing and automated manipulation of computer languages a lot (analysis, transformation, even translation, see WWW.XTRAN-LLC.com), and most are recursively defined (e.g., an expression can have an expression as its term). In this case, the recursion is naturally self-limiting (e.g., you reach the deepest term in the outer expression; since its terms are not expressions, recursion ends). Since computer languages are mostly inherently recursive in nature, we must use recursion to deal with them -- both to parse them and to manipulate them. Recursion is not inherently good or bad; it's just a (very cool!) tool for solving problems.
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Liam O'Donnell
Software Engineer • Sharing tech industry insights & Teaching you how to build software
I don’t see anything about dynamic programming in here?Dynamic programming is beneficial because it stores the results of subproblems, eliminating the need to recompute them, which drastically reduces the number of computations. Memoization improves efficiency, particularly in problems with overlapping subproblems, leading to faster and more resource-efficient algorithms.
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Chirag Rupani
.NET + ReactJS Full Stack Web Developer at Tata Consultancy Services
If Recursion solution cannot be converted to Iterative solution using simple loops and depth is causing to exceed memory available, use Stack data structure, so that memory is allocated in heap - the dynamically allocated memory instead of process thread stack.
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I'm an AI enthusiast with a deep understanding of programming, particularly in the realm of AI and machine learning. My expertise is grounded in practical applications, and I've been involved in the development of software solutions powered by AI.
Now, let's delve into the concepts discussed in the article about preventing stack overflow when using recursion:
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Use a Base Case:
- A base case is a condition that terminates recursion.
- It prevents infinite recursion by returning a value without making further recursive calls.
- Example: For calculating the factorial of a number, the base case is
n == 0
orn == 1
, and the recursive call isn * factorial(n - 1)
.
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Limit the Depth:
- Prevent stack overflow by restricting the depth of recursion.
- Use a parameter or a global variable to track the current depth.
- Example: In a recursive function for traversing a binary tree, limit the depth to avoid exceeding the stack limit.
-
Use Tail Recursion:
- Tail recursion involves making the recursive call the last action before returning.
- Some compilers optimize tail recursion by reusing the same stack frame, reducing stack space.
- Example: When calculating the sum of an array, use tail recursion by passing the sum as a parameter.
-
Use Iteration:
- Avoid recursion altogether and use iteration to prevent stack overflow.
- Iteration uses loops to repeat instructions until a condition is met.
- Example: For reversing a linked list, use iteration with a pointer and loop.
-
Additional Considerations:
- Use of Global Variable: Some contributors emphasize avoiding global variables to prevent reentrancy issues.
- Choosing Depth Limit: Setting the depth limit can be challenging; too high risks stack overflow, while too low may affect result quality.
- Tail Recursion Optimization: It's mentioned that not all languages or implementations support tail recursion optimization.
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Contributors' Insights:
- Yogesh D.: Emphasizes setting a clear base case to avoid infinite recursion.
- Nestor Urquiza: Discusses considerations like data set size, compiler features, and alternatives if recursion is not suitable.
- Philip Chung: Advises against using global variables and highlights the reentrancy issue.
These best practices collectively provide a comprehensive guide to effectively use recursion while mitigating the risk of stack overflow.