Pattern matching
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg116214] Pattern matching
- From: StatsMath <stats.math8 at gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2011 05:35:17 -0500 (EST)
Have a question regarding the applicaiton of pattern rules:
fact[4] //. {fact[n_] :> n fact[n-1], fact[0] -> 1}
This is a bug since fact[0] needs to be defined 1st, but I expected
the above to grind away idefnitely but it returned a a value 0,
instead of an infininte computation.
Can you help me understand why the above returns 0?
Thanks!