Question

can someone please clarify the difference between iterative and recursive?

Answer 1

Iterative functions usually work by way of a 'for' or 'while' loop to do identical processing bit by bit while recursive functions do just one bit but call other instances of themselves to do the rest.

Look at the examples below to combine a list of strings. Notice how the recursive function picks out the first string in the list and combines it with "rest" which is determined by creating another instance of recursive() which works on the list starting at the next string in the list. Each pass cuts the list down by 1 until there is only 1 string left, the last one which is returned.

list = ['These ', 'words ', 'are ', 'combined']

def Iterative(list):
combo = ''
for i in range(len(list)):
combo = combo + list[i]
return combo

def recursive(list):
if len(list) ==1:
return list[0]
word = list[0]
rest = recursive(list[1:])
combo = word + rest
return combo

Hope that helps!