I think you can argue both ways.

Okay, Here's my argument for my way :)

If I'm auditing a set of books and need to understand the absence of a cheque to a customer-supplier one month, and go looking for a combination of debits and credits that sum to zero (hence no cheque needed raising), I would not be best pleased if my algorithm came back and told me that "this (empty) set of no credits and no debits could account for that possibility".

Your original code does roughly for both base case and recursive case ...

Actually, that is very deliberate. I try very hard to reduce the number of special cases in recursive algorithms. Recursive nirvana is no special cases, but that is exceptionally rare. In real life even many of the cases that mathematicians treat as having no special cases, eg. succ(n), actually have machine limits.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

In reply to Re^7: Recursion problem by BrowserUk
in thread Recursion problem by someone202

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