lesson 2

Consider the following recursive function.

public static int mystery(int a, int b) { if (b == 0) return 0;

if (b % 2 == 0) return mystery(a+a, b/2);

return mystery(a+a, b/2) + a; }

What are the values of mystery(2, 25) and mystery(3, 11)? Given positive integers a and b, describe what value mystery(a, b) computes. Answer the same question, but replace + with * and replace return 0 with return 1. Solution: 50 and 33. It computes a*b. If you replace + with *, it computes a^b.