Python recursion not stopping

Question

I’m super new to Python and trying to make a factorial function using recursion. But it just keeps crashing with some RecursionError.   

Here’s my code:

def factorial(n):
    if n == 0:
        return 1
    else:
        return n * factorial(n)
        
print(factorial(5))

I thought “if n == 0” would stop it, but nope.  

Can someone explain why it’s not stopping and how I can fix it so factorial(5) gives 120?

Answer 1

look at your "else" wing, instead of factorial(n-1)  you wrote factorial(n) so in other words your program was calculating "n*n*n*n*......." infinetly and that's why you get a recusion error

Answer 2

def factorial(n):

    for i in range (n+1):

        if n == 0:
            return 1
        else:
            return n * factorial(n)
        
print(factorial(5))

Comments

You have the same problem as the original poster: infinite recursion.

Answer 3

just a small correction
you should write

return n*factorial(n-1)