Recursive Functions

In this lesson you will learn how to write a recursive function in Go and understand how a function can call itself. This is for anyone searching for "Go recursive functions how to use".

A recursive function is a function that calls itself. It suits work that repeats the same calculation pattern, such as "n! = n x (n-1)!".

The sample code has factorial call itself in the form n * factorial(n-1) to compute the factorial of 5. The stopping condition (here n <= 1) is what makes the chain of calls come to an end.

A common stumbling block for beginners is forgetting that stopping condition. Without one, the function calls itself forever and the program crashes. Deep recursion also consumes a lot of stack, so in practice it is worth considering whether a loop would do instead.

In real-world development recursion is a natural fit for traversing tree structures and folder hierarchies, though a loop is often preferred where performance matters.

📖 Reference code

package main

import "fmt"

func factorial(n int) int {
    if n <= 1 {
        return 1
    }
    return n * factorial(n-1)
}

func main() {
    fmt.Println(factorial(5))
}

✍️ Your code

Type your code, then press "Run"

🧪 This site can't compile or run Go directly, so it checks on the spot whether what you typed matches the reference code (scoring happens entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere).