Recursion or Iteration?

Question

Is there a performance hit if we use a loop instead of recursion or vice versa in algorithms where both can serve the same purpose? Eg: Check if the given string is a palind

Answer 1

If you're just iterating over a list, then sure, iterate away.

A couple of other answers have mentioned (depth-first) tree traversal. It really is such a great example, because it's a very common thing to do to a very common data structure. Recursion is extremely intuitive for this problem.

Check out the "find" methods here: http://penguin.ewu.edu/cscd300/Topic/BSTintro/index.html