Lecture 2

Learning objectives

After this class, you should be able to:

1. Given a recursive code, draw a figure to show how the state of the run time stack changes with time.
2. Given a recursive definition of a formula or an algorithm, write code that computes the formula or implements the algorithm, and prove the correctness of your implementation.

Reading assignment

1. Section 1.3.
2. Lecture: Recursion.
3. Review C++ and Unix material from your previous courses; sections 1.4-1.5 will help with C++.

Exercises and review questions

• Exercises and review questions on current lecture's material
  1. Write recursive and non-recursive codes to compute Fibonacci numbers, and later look at the solutions in the examples/Lec2 directory of this course.
  2. Show the states of the program stack in a recursive computation of fib(4).
  3. Let a singly linked list of ints be sorted in ascending order. Write a recursive function that outputs the list in descending order.
  4. Prove, using induction, that the iterative function power, which we discussed in class, correctly computes the power of a number.

• Questions on next lecture's material
  1. Solve the sample quiz.

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Last modified: 30 Aug 2011