How can recursive functions in PHP, like the one described in the thread, lead to performance issues in large projects?

Recursive functions in PHP can lead to performance issues in large projects because each recursive call adds a new level to the call stack, which can consume a lot of memory. To solve this issue, you can optimize the recursive function by implementing tail recursion, which allows the PHP interpreter to optimize memory usage by reusing the same stack frame for each recursive call.

function factorial($n, $accumulator = 1) {
    if ($n == 0) {
        return $accumulator;
    } else {
        return factorial($n - 1, $accumulator * $n);
    }
}