R help - Apr 2003 - Recursion Limits?

See the code below.

First, what are recursion limits in R.  The function is stopping after 25
iterations for me.  Is this general, or localized?  Can recursion limits be
changed?

Second, which is generally more efficient, recursion or looping over a function?

R 1.6.1
Windows 98

-----------------------------------------------------------
recurse<-function (n) {
   ifelse(n<50, {print(n); n=n+1; Recall(n)}, print (n) )
   }
>recurse(30)
[1] 30
[1] 31
...
...
...
[1] 50
[1] 50
>
> recurse(20)
[1] 20
[1] 21
...
...
...
[1] 44
[1] 45
Error in ifelse(n < 50, { : evaluation is nested too deeply: infinite
recursion?
>

Brett Magill <bmagill at earthlink.net> writes:
> See the code below.
> 
> First, what are recursion limits in R.  The function is stopping after 25
iterations for me.  Is this general, or localized?  Can recursion limits be
changed?
> 
> Second, which is generally more efficient, recursion or looping over a
function?
> 
> R 1.6.1
> Windows 98
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> recurse<-function (n) {
>    ifelse(n<50, {print(n); n=n+1; Recall(n)}, print (n) )
>    }
> 
> >recurse(30)
> [1] 30
> [1] 31
> ...
> ...
> ...
> [1] 50
> [1] 50
> >
> 
> > recurse(20)
> [1] 20
> [1] 21
> ...
> ...
> ...
> [1] 44
> [1] 45
> Error in ifelse(n < 50, { : evaluation is nested too deeply: infinite
recursion?
Try 

options(expressions = some_large_value)
>From the help page for options
     `expressions': sets a limit on the number of nested expressions
          that will be evaluated.  This is especially important on the
          Macintosh since stack overflow is likely if this is set too
          high.  Valid values are 25...100000 with default 500.