[racket] recursion??

Ronald,

The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has a pretty good
section about how the recursion happens. It's pretty short, and I think it
covers what you are interested in understanding
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-10.html#%_sec_1.1.5

In particular, check out the "Applicative order versus normal order"
sub-section and Exercise 1.5. It really helped me understand what's going
on.


On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 4:53 AM, Marco Morazan <morazanm at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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