Recursive data structure
A recursive data structure is a structure whose definition directly or indirectly refers to another instance of the same structure.
Functional Design and Architecture: Examples in Haskell
A recursive data type is a type whose definition refers to itself, allowing it to represent recursively structured values.
- How it is used
- Models domain values and computation chains whose depth is not fixed in advance.
- How deep it goes
- Explains recursive constructors through lists and Free, including recursive mapping and the type-growth problem.
- Examples
- Uses person lists, recursive `fmap`, and sandwich-action scripts with the `Free` type.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate/understand how self-referential constructors represent variable-depth values and keep chained scripts uniformly typed.
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Elixir in Action, Third Edition
A recursive data structure is a structure whose elements or parts can contain structures of the same form.
- How it is used
- Explains list representation and performance trade-offs before applying head-tail pattern matching.
- How deep it goes
- Explains internal head-tail construction, constant-time access, linear updates, and improper-list boundaries.
- Examples
- Uses nested cons-style expressions, head-tail matches, list updates, concatenation, and a recursive list diagram.
- What you can do after
- Apply Elixir head-tail syntax to construct, decompose, and reason about list access and update costs.
Read how Elixir in Action, Third Edition explains recursive data structure →
Related concepts
- Boxaddressed by · Box is a Rust owning smart pointer that provides indirection by storing a uniquely owned value in heap-allocated memory.
- listincludes · A list is an ordered collection of elements arranged in a sequence.
- recursionaddressed by · Recursion is a computational technique in which a definition or procedure refers to or invokes the same definition or procedure, directly or indirectly.
- token treeincludes · A token tree is a recursive Rust macro syntax structure consisting of tokens and nested delimited sequences of tokens.
- free monadincludes · A free monad represents computations as composable syntax over an operation set, with interpretation and execution supplied separately.
- binary search treeimplements · A binary search tree is a binary tree whose nodes follow an ordering relation placing keys in designated left and right subtrees relative to each node.
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