Linked Lists - A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java - page 154

myList by executing the following instruction:
System.out.println(ListString .lengthRec(myList));
Similarly, we can rewrite with a recursive the previous functions, such as the
belongToRec function that returns a boolean stating whether a given element
is inside a list or not:

Program 7.11 Recursive membership function
static boolean belongToRec(String s , ListString list )

if (list== null ) return false ;
else
{ if (s.equals(list .name))
return true ;
else
return belongToRec(s , l i s t . next ) ;

}

}

The recursive display procedure is written as:

Program 7.12 Recursive display of a list
static void DisplayRec(ListString

list )

{ if (list== null )
System . out . println ( "null" );
else
{ System . out . print ( l i s t .name+ "-->" );
DisplayRec( l i s t . next) ;

}

}

Note that if we choose to call function DisplayRec before printing on the console
the current cell by interchanging the two lines in the else-case as follows:

Program 7.13 Reversed recursive display of a list
static void DisplayRecRev(ListString list )

{ if (list== null )
System . out . print ( "null" );
else
{ DisplayRecRev ( l i s t . next ) ;
System . out . print ( "<--" +list .name) ;

}

}

Then because of the mechanism of the function call stack, the list will be
displayed from the tail to its head. Indeed, the first word written to the output