factorial (n) = n x (n-1) x (n-2) ... 1
Calculate factorial of a number in Java using recursion
Carvia Tech | December 03, 2019 | 2 min read | 66 views | Java Coding Challenges
Factorial of a number is calculated using below formula:
the factorial of a number is calculated by formula number * (number -1)
till zero and since the value of factorial zero is 1, it acts as a base case in the recursive version of the factorial method.
Recursive approach
public class Factorial {
public long factorial(long n) {
if (n == 1)
return 1;
else {
return n * factorial(n - 1);
}
}
}
Iterative approach
class Scratch {
public long fact(long number) {
long result = 1L;
while (number != 0) {
result = result * number;
number--;
}
return result;
}
}
Factorial using Java 8 Streams
Java 8 streams with reduction method can be used to calculate factorial of a number.
import java.util.stream.LongStream;
class Scratch {
public static long factorialStreams(long n) {
return LongStream.rangeClosed(2, n)
.reduce(1, (long a, long b) -> a * b);
}
}
-
LongStream.rangeClosed(2, n) method creates a Stream of longs from [2 to n].
-
Lambda function supplied for reduce
(a,b) → a * b
will multiply each pair ofa
andb
and return the result. The result then carries over toa
for the next round. The value of1
is used in the reduction method as the starting value for variablea
for the first iteration.
Handling very large numbers
Here we are using long
to hold the result of multiplication, which can quickly overflow due to maximum limit an long can hold. We can improve the above two programs to use BigInteger as discussed in the below article:
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