Hi Martin
Thanks for your post. This basic but fundamental computation is a
great example when trying to understand the concept of recursion for
the first time.
Also thanks to John for the stackoverflow link where i found a very
good summarised definition completing some of the posts left here.
For future readers of this post who want to learn to programm (just
like myself) let me re-state the basics i have learned now:
- a procedure is said to be recursive when it contains a statement
that calls itself
- there must be a condition where the recursion has to stop otherwise
the routine will continue to call itself infinitely.
This is called the Base Case
- every time the procedure calls itself the memory gradually fills up
with the copies until the whole thing winds down again
as the "return" statements start being executed.
- the above point means that a recursive approach is expensive on
resources so in the practical world it should be avoided.
(Thanks John for giving me a real life example where recursion is
recommended)
For the purposes of learning programming i think it's a must to
understand Recursion so thanks all for your help!
Ok so now i hope you all agree that my code is also correct :)
def r_countSubStringMatch(target,key):
counter=0
if len(key)<len(target):
fsi=target.find(key)
if fsi!=-1: # BASE CASE
counter=1+r_countSubStringMatch(target[fsi+1:],key)
return counter
else:
return counter
elif len(key)==len(target):
if key==target:
counter+=1
return counter
else:
return counter
return counter
print r_countSubStringMatch("atgacatgcacaagtatgcat","atgc")
tnx
Baba
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