Part 5 - Recursive function c# example

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What is a recursive function in c#? Give an example.
This is a common c# interview question.
A recursive function is a function that calls itself. Let's look at an example of computing factorial of a number with and without recursion.



Program to compute factorial of a number without using recursion.
public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        // Prompt the user to enter a number
        Console.WriteLine("Please enter a number");
        // Read the number from the console and convert to int
        int userNumber = Convert.ToInt32(Console.ReadLine());
        // Call Factorial function and pass the user entered number to it
        double factorial = Factorial(userNumber);
        // Print the factorial
        Console.WriteLine("Factorial of " + userNumber.ToString() + " = " + factorial.ToString());
    }

    public static double Factorial(int number)
    {
        // ZERO factorial is 1, so return 1 if number is ZERO.
        if (number == 0)
            return 1;
            
        double factorial = 1;

        // Compute the factorial using a for loop
        for (int i = number; i >= 1; i--)
        {
            factorial = factorial * i;
        }

        // return the factorial of the number
        return factorial;
    }
}

Program to compute factorial of a number with recursion.
public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        // Prompt the user to enter a number
        Console.WriteLine("Please enter a number");
        // Read the number from the console and convert to int
        int userNumber = Convert.ToInt32(Console.ReadLine());
        // Call Factorial function and pass the user entered number to it
        double factorial = Factorial(userNumber);
        // Print the factorial
        Console.WriteLine("Factorial of " + userNumber.ToString() + " = " + factorial.ToString());
    }

    public static double Factorial(int number)
    {
        // ZERO factorial is 1, so return 1 if number is ZERO.
        if (number == 0)
            return 1;

        // Notice that the Factorial method is calling itself here
        return number * Factorial(number - 1);
    }
}