Recursiveness
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Recursiveness is the quality of being defined in terms which include the whole. For example, in symbolic logic a well-formed formula (WFF) can be either:
- a predicate
- the negation of a WFF
- the combination of two WFF's with a binary operator
The LISP programming language uses a recursive data structure. Most programming languages permit recursion by allowing the programmer call a function within itself. Some have no syntax for making looping code other than by recursion.
A fascination with recursive definitions in the software development community (free software in particular) led to the invention of several recursive acronyms:
- PHP (originally Personal Home Page) => PHP Hypertext Pre-processor
- GNU (GNU's Not Unix)
- WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator)
- YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language)
See also
External links
Unit on recursion in free online computer science course from MIT.