Recursive overflow

Question

I have a problem that gives Stack Overflow Error on my code. I'm trying to find a number in one array, but I have to do it in a recursive function, and gives that error.

public static int linear(int[] array, int num, int indice) {
    if (indice < array.length-1) {
        if (array[indice] == num) {
            return indice;
        } else {
            ocurrencias++;
            linear(array, num, indice + 1);
        }
    }
    return -1;
}

If you can help me I would appreciate. My english is a little rusty, sorry.

What's the size of your array? If you are running into stackoverflow just use a simple for loop. If you have to use recursion, you will want to sort the array and use a binary search algorithm. — C.B.
– C.B., Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 18:55
the size of the array is inserted before by the user. And i have to use linear search to find the number, but using recursive function — André
– André, Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 23:51

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:56:55Z

1

You're missing a return before the recursive call to linear, don't you?

return linear(array, num, indice + 1);

However, I don't think Java does tail-recursion-optimization (What is tail recursion?), so you have to increase your stack-size appropriately for huge arrays ;)

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:56

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answered Dec 4, 2013 at 18:55

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1 Comment

André Over a year ago

I had the return statement before "linear" but error appear as well. The variable indice starts at 0 and should increment until it is lower than array.length-1. If the array have 100 positions indice should stop at 99.

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