You're probably running out of memory: every recursive subroutine call will take up some amount of memory until it returns. By the way, your code looks very strange: you're passing all kinds of parameters to prime() but you never use them. Instead you appear to be modifying global variables. In fact, it doesn't really look like a "traditional" recursive algorithm at all.

You really should use strict and warnings.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: Misunderstanding Recursion by Joost
in thread Misunderstanding Recursion by Andrew_Levenson

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