[racket] recursion??

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 7:37 AM, Ronald Reynolds <bumpker at bumpker.com> wrote:
> I hope I'm not too much of a 'pain in the neck noobie' but what is the short
> clean answer about what's going on when we
> name a function as part of the definition of itself..  This seems pretty
> esoteric to me.  What does the system do?
>

I am not sure what you mean by esoteric. The simple answer is that you
are applying a function to some input. It just happens to be that the
function being called is the same function that is being evaluated.
The longer answer is that the function is being evaluated in an
environment that contains a definition for itself. Thus, it can call
itself. Others have suggested pointers into the literature for the
finer details of implementation.

Hope it helps,

Marco



-- 

Cheers,

Marco