Erlang Language Loop and Recursion
Syntax
- function ( list | iolist | tuple ) -> function( tail ).
Remarks
Why recursive functions?
Erlang is a functional programming language and don't any kind of loop structure. Everything in functional programming is based on data, type and functions. If you want a loop, you need to create a function who call itself.
Traditional while or for loop in imperative and object oriented language can be represented like that in Erlang:
loop() ->
% do something here
loop().
Good method to understand this concept is to expand all function calls. We'll see that on other examples.
