👀 Views: 21 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-14

javascript recursion performance JavaScript

I need help solving I'm getting frustrated with I'm wondering if anyone has experience with I have a recursive function in JavaScript that is supposed to calculate the factorial of a number, but it seems to enter an infinite loop when I pass in certain values..... Here’s my code: ```javascript function factorial(n) { if (n < 0) return 'undefined'; if (n === 0 || n === 1) return 1; return n * factorial(n - 1); } ``` When I call `factorial(5)`, it works as expected and returns `120`. However, when I try to pass in a larger number like `factorial(20)`, I notice that it's taking unusually long to compute and eventually hangs. The call stack seems to be growing indefinitely, and I need to find any issues in my logic. I’ve also tried adding a console log in the function to see how many times it gets called: ```javascript function factorial(n) { console.log(`Called with n=${n}`); if (n < 0) return 'undefined'; if (n === 0 || n === 1) return 1; return n * factorial(n - 1); } ``` This shows that it's indeed recursively calling itself without reaching a base case. I suspect it might be related to how JavaScript handles recursion and the limits of the call stack. I’ve looked into tail call optimization but it seems my function structure doesn’t lend itself to that. Can anyone provide insights on why this infinite loop occurs and how to fix it without running into performance optimization? The project is a mobile app built with Javascript. Thanks in advance! My team is using Javascript for this microservice.