Thread: Whats wrong with simple recursion printing program?

Eh, why do you call exit(1) in find_path instead of returning a value? You're basically saying: when x is greater than 6, there is an error so dire that we must terminate the program immediately!

exit(1) means terminate the program immediately. What you want to do is to return from the function, without exiting the program.

Originally Posted by tmac619619

Without the exit statement, my function becomes an infinite recursion and seg faults.

You should find out why, not just slap an exit call and expect it to work. Of course your printf call never prints anything: how can it print anything when you forcibly terminate the program before it has any chance of printing anything?

This works for me:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int find_path(char maze[][8], int x, int y)
{
    if (x > 6)
    {
        return 1;
    }

    printf("%d ", find_path(maze, x + 1, y));

    return 0;
}

int main(void)
{
    char maze[8][8];
    find_path(maze, 0, 0);
    putchar('\n');
    return 0;
}

I get the output:

Code:

1 0 0 0 0 0 0

Notice that I indented my code properly. Your program is sorely in need of proper formatting. You absolutely need to indent your code properly. If you don't know how, ask. If you don't indent your code properly, then it will be unreadable. If your code is unreadable, people won't read it. If people won't read it, your posting it here is in vain.

@laserlight thanks for the formatting tip.

Code:

int find_path(char maze[][8],int x, int y) {
    
    if(x>6)
        {
            return 1;
        }
    
    printf("%c",find_path(maze,x+1,y));   // <---- Is this the problem line? Print out a char, but find_path is of type int?
    
    
    return 0;
} 

int main(void) {


   char maze[8][8];
   find_path(maze, 0, 0);
}

It still won't print. The 8x8 array is an array of Char's.

Is this the problem statement?
printf("%c",find_path(maze,x+1,y));

I messed around with the '%c' '%s', but it won't print out anything.

Originally Posted by tmac619619

It still won't print. The 8x8 array is an array of Char's.

Is this the problem statement?
printf("%c",find_path(maze,x+1,y));

I messed around with the '%c' '%s', but it won't print out anything.

find_path returns an int, so you should print its return value with %d.

Yes, you have an 8 by 8 array of char, but you are not printing the elements from that array, so it does not make sense to use %c.