Coding Towards The Answer, Part 6

Tracing Recursion And Iteration …

Coding Towards The Answer, Part 5

Many times, we get lost in the call of things. Let’s put a probe tracer to know how it does down (and up) the stack.

# Global variable to track the depth
depth = 0

def recursive_function(target_depth):
    global depth

    # Print the depth
    print("Depth:", depth)

    # Base case
    if depth >= target_depth:
        return

    # Recursive call
    depth += 1
    recursive_function(target_depth)
    # depth -= 1

# Call the recursive function
target_depth = 8
recursive_function(target_depth)

print("Depth (reported in main):", depth)

"""
Depth: 0
Depth: 1
Depth: 2
Depth: 3
Depth: 4
Depth: 5
Depth: 6
Depth: 7
Depth: 8

Depth (reported in main): 8
"""

In recursion as stacks are used, the variable depth changes within each call as it pushes or pops (recalls) variable within the context of the call. 

In iteration when we link one object within another:

class Node:
    def __init__(self, value, depth=0):
        self.value = value
        self.depth = depth
        self.children = []

    def add_child(self, value):
        child = Node(value, self.depth + 1)
        self.children.append(child)
        return child

    def…