Comparison to Delegation

A related technique to recursion is "delegation."

This is when you have one method call a different arity version of itself.

// This method is delegated to
void seasonFood(int shakes) {
    for (int i = 0; i < shakes; i++) {
        System.out.println("1 shake of pepper");
    }
}

// by this method, which provides a "default" value of 2
void seasonFood() {
    seasonFood(2);
}

void main() {
    seasonFood();
}

This is distinct from recursion since, while the method delegated to might have the same name as the one delegating, different overloads of methods are considered distinct methods.

void seasonFood() is therefore a different method than void seasonFood(int).