Sum of Natural Numbers Using Recursion

In this example, you’ll learn to find the sum of natural numbers using recursion. To solve this problem, a recursive function calculate_sum() function is created.

To understand this example, you should have the knowledge of following R programming topics:

R Functions
R Recursive Function
R Environment and Scope

Example: Sum of Natural Numbers

# Program to find the sum of natural numbers upto n using recursion
calculate_sum() <- function(n) {
if(n <= 1) {
return(n)
} else {
return(n + calculate_sum(n-1))
}
}

Output

> calculate_sum(7)
[1] 28

Here, we ask the user for a number. The number entered by the user is passed to calculate_sum() recursive function which computes the sum up to that number.