How to find the largest element in a list of integers recursively?

Question

I\'m trying to write a function which will recursively find the largest element in a list of integers. I know how to do this in Java, but can\'t understand how to do this at Sca

Answer 1

I presume this is for the progfun-example

This is the simplest recursive solution I could come up with

  def max(xs: List[Int]): Int = {
    if (xs.isEmpty) throw new NoSuchElementException("The list is empty")
    val tail = xs.tail
    if (!tail.isEmpty) maxOfTwo(xs.head, max(xs.tail))
    else xs.head
  }

  def maxOfTwo(x: Int, y: Int): Int = {
    if (x >= y) x
    else y
  }