CSC300 / CSC402: Stacks and Recursion [3/14]

Stacks are useful for backtracking
...in particular when working with trees and graphs!

• Make choices going forward
• Revisit choices going backward in reverse order

Functions use a Call Stack

• Thus, recursive functions are useful for backtracking

Recursive functions are more general than loops

• Loops always go forward
• Recursive functions go forward, then back

We can translate any loop into a recursive function

• This is a warmup for Data Structures 2