rekursiivisesti

Rekursiivisesti is a Finnish adverb meaning “in a recursive manner.” It describes actions, definitions, or processes that are defined in terms of themselves, or that operate by applying the same rule to progressively smaller instances of the same problem. In mathematics, computer science, and related disciplines, rekursiivisesti is used to indicate that a computation is performed through recursion rather than by a single, non-recursive step.

Origin and usage: The word is formed from rekursiivinen (recursive) with the adverbial suffix -isesti. The concept relies on a base case that terminates the process and a recursive step that reduces the problem size.

Examples: A standard example is the factorial function defined rekursiivisesti: 0! = 1 and for n > 0, n! = n × (n−1)!. A tree traversal can be described rekursiivisesti as visiting a node and then recursively processing each child subtree. In programming, a function may call itself rekursiivisesti with a smaller input until a base case is reached.

Advantages and caveats: Rekursiiviset approaches are often elegant and easy to reason about, but they may incur overhead from repeated function calls and risk stack overflow for deep recursions. Some languages support tail recursion optimization, which can reduce or eliminate the stack usage for certain recursive patterns.

See also: rekursio, rekursiivinen, recursion, programming languages.