9.2 Iterative Approaches
In algorithm design, there are two fundamental approaches to problem-solving: recursion and iteration. While recursion involves function calls, iterative approaches use loops to solve problems. Converting a recursive function into an iterative one is a critical skill in the software industry and requires a good understanding of both approaches.
Although recursion has its benefits, iterative approaches tend to be more efficient in terms of memory usage. This is because they do not have the overhead of function call stacks, allowing them to handle larger inputs without risking stack overflow errors.
As an example, let's take a deep dive into the iterative approach by looking at the calculation of factorial. Factorial is the product of all positive integers less than or equal to a non-negative integer n, and is denoted by n!. To calculate the factorial of a number, we can use an iterative approach that involves a loop to multiply all the numbers from 1 to...
