I'm trying to understand the use of recursive functions described on page
45 of An Introduction to R by the R core development team.
A function is a list of expressions, which all get executed with only the
last being assigned to a global variable, right?
So if a function refers recursively to itself, it should simply start with
the first
expression and go from there. At least that is my understanding of why the
example given on page 45 works.
In light of the above, I would appreciate it if someone would understand
why the following example does not work:
q <- function(x,h) {if (x < 2) {x <<- x+1; return(q(x))} else return(x)}
If x < 1, this should add 1 to x and go back to the beginning of the if
expression, and the final result should be 2. So q(0) should return 2. But
it returns an error message.
Joe Boyer
Statistical Sciences
Renaissance Bldg 510, 3233-D
Mail Stop RN0320
8-275-3661
cell: (610) 209-8531
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