Comparison with iterative solutions
When managing video playlists or similar hierarchical data structures, both recursive and iterative approaches have their place. The choice between them often depends on readability and performance considerations. Let’s explore how these two approaches compare in the context of a video management system.
Readability
Recursion naturally fits scenarios where the problem can be divided into smaller, similar problems. For instance, traversing a tree of video playlists and sub-playlists is intuitively understood with recursion:
void TraversePlaylist(Playlist playlist)
{
foreach (var item in playlist.Items)
{
switch (item)
{
case Video video:
...
