Learned @ Flatiron: A recursive "count up" method in Ruby.
@cjlwired (cc: @flatironschool)
A couple things emerged for me in this experience. First: tumblr doesn't support Markdown very nicely, and I'm going to switch to Octopress pretty much immediately after finishing this post. I'm shaking my head at you, tumblr...
Second, recursion is awesome. For this exercise, I sort of felt like a cheater - just because I added an extra argument to the much simpler "count down" recursive method. But in reality, there is NO OTHER WAY TO DO THIS (without using global variables, a big faux pas in Ruby)! I place a lot of emphasis on that, because I spent quite a bit of time in pursuit of a one-argument method - and for really no good reason. Adding arguments to methods is perfectly legitimate, and also a great idea when you're modifying existing methods for new applications that contain one additional layer of complexity.
Anyway, here's the code (one-argument "countdown" first; two-argument "count up" second):
def cu(counter, max)
puts "Counter value is = #{counter}"
return max if counter >= max #cease stacking calls once counter equals max
counter+cu(counter+1,max)
end
def cd(num)
puts "Counter value is = #{num}"
return 1 if num <= 1
num+cd(num-1)
end
Now, to think of cool applications for recursive methods. Maybe sorting to start with. Time to google...
annaxmalina
discoholicmusic
janainaart
yousharknotpass
kianamaiart
kaledo-art
titsay
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
germansingergirl
