Recursion functions

Tell us what’s happening:
I know how the recursion functions structured but I am not understanding how the .push() method is excuted after ‘recursive call has finished’ please help me

  **Your code so far**

// Only change code below this line
function countdown(n){
if(n<1){
return [];

}else{
  let result = countdown(n-1);

  result.unshift(n);
  console.log(result);
  return result;
}
}
// Only change code above this line
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Challenge: Use Recursion to Create a Countdown

Link to the challenge:

I’m not seeing push used anywhere in your code. Could you clarify your question and/or paste code that’s giving you troubles?

1 Like

Hi, thanks for your willingness for help me, but I was mistaken, I was meaning . unshift () .

Taking as example n = 5.

For countdown(5), n is not < 1, so the else block is executed. In it, it’s needed to calculate countdown(4).
For countdown(4), n is not < 1, so the else block is executed. In it, it’s needed to calculate countdown(3).

This going deeper into the recursive calls happens until countdown(0) is called from countdown(1), for which base case is entered, and [] returned.

Now the previous recursive calls can continue in reverse order.

In the countdown(1), result is now []. So result.unshift(n) will unshift 1 into the result array. Finally countdown(1) returns [1].
In the countdown(2), result is now [1]. So result.unshift(n) will unshift 2 into the result array. Finally countdown(2) returns [2, 1].

This continues until the first recursive call is reached again. Where for countdown(5), result will be [4, 3, 2, 1] and 5 is unshifted into the array, resulting in final answer [5, 4, 3, 2 ,1].

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