What is a base case in recursion, and why is it important?

A base case is the condition that tells a recursive function when to stop calling itself. It is important because it prevents infinite recursion and gives the function a known result from which previous calls can build their answers.

Recursion works by solving a large problem as a smaller version of the same problem. A recursive function usually has two parts:

Without a base case, the function has no stopping point. It keeps creating new function calls until the program runs out of available memory and throws an error such as a stack overflow.…