What are the potential pitfalls of using recursion in PHP?

One potential pitfall of using recursion in PHP is the possibility of running into a "maximum function nesting level" error if the recursion depth is too deep. This can happen if the recursive function calls itself too many times before reaching a base case. To avoid this issue, you can increase the maximum function nesting level in the php.ini file or rewrite the recursive function to be more efficient. 

// Increase the maximum function nesting level in php.ini
// Add this line to php.ini file
; Maximum recursion depth
xdebug.max_nesting_level = 1000
```

```php
// Rewrite the recursive function to be more efficient
function factorial($n) {
    if ($n <= 1) {
        return 1;
    } else {
        $result = 1;
        for ($i = 1; $i <= $n; $i++) {
            $result *= $i;
        }
        return $result;
    }
}

Keywords

recursion stack overflow memory consumption performance function calls

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