Return the factorial of the provided integer. If the integer is represented with the letter n, a factorial is the product of all positive integers less than or equal to n.
Factorials are often represented with the shorthand notation n!
For example: 5! = 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 = 120f
Return the factorial of the provided integer. If the integer is represented with the letter n, a factorial is the product of all positive integers less than or equal to n. Factorials are often represented with the shorthand notation n! For example: 5! = 1 _ 2 _ 3 _ 4 _ 5 = 120
This one is simple, since the factorials of both 0 and 1 is just 1, you can go ahead and return 1. The IF function here is responsible for breaking the loop I created using a recursive function, first it checks if the number you gave the function is 0 or 1 and then returns 1 if the condition passed; since there's no ELSE, the rest of the function is executed.
Now, I put the references I studied to understand a little bit of how recursion works, and it's when a function repeats itself. The first time I did this challenge I used a short but effective while loop but I wanted to make it shorter and more efficient, you know... because of reasons ;). Basically what this does is return the number you gave multiplied by the function itself but this time the value passed to the num parameter is num-1 which ultimately translates to 4. The very function is going to run inside itself haha, funny eh? It's like having functions that run inside themselves until they reach a very deep level (depends on how many times it runs itself).
The first returned value can be visualized better if you think about those parenthesis operations you did in secondary school where you do the math inside every parenthesis, bracket and square bracket until you get a final result (a total). This time it's the same thing, look at the program flow:
[num = 5]
Is 5 equal to 1 or 0? No ---> Oki doki, let's continue...
Returns:
(5 _ (second execution: 4 _ (third execution: 3 _ (fourth execution: 2 _ fifth execution: 1))))
What it returns can be viewed as (5*(4*(3*(2*1)))) or just 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1, and the function will return the result of that operation: 120. Now, let's check what the rest of the executions do:
- Second Execution: num = 5-1 = 4 -> is num 0 or 1? No --> return the multiplication between 4 and the next result when num is now 4-1.
- Third Execution: num = 4 - 1 = 3 -> is num 0 or 1? No --> return the multiplication between 3 and the next result when num is now 3-1.
- Fourth Execution: num = 3-1 = 2 -> is num 0 or 1? No --> return the multiplication between 2 and the next result when num is now 2-1.
- Fifth Execution: num = 2-1 = 1 -> is num 0 or 1? Yep --> return 1. And this is where the recursion stops because there are no more executions.
Don't scroll down if you don't want to see it!
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function factorialize(num) {
if (num === 0 || num == 1) { return 1; }
return num * factorialize(num-1);
}
factorialize(5);function factorialize(num) {
var factorial = 1;
for (var n = 2; n <= num; n++) {
factorial = factorial * n;
}
return factorial;
}- Recursion: https://www.codecademy.com/es/courses/javascript-lesson-205/0/1
- Factorialization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/Arithmetic_Operators
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