Simply put, a recursive method is one which calls itself. This appendix will help you apply recursion to the assignment. Figure 6: A simple recursive method In this example, the method contains_vader is a recursive method which checks to see if the string “Darth Vader” is in an array. To understand this code we must first observe that our Sith Lord is only in the array if he is the first half of the array or the second half of the array. The code on lines 11 to 14 takes advantage of this fact by breaking the array in half and calling itself on each of the resulting subarrays. Of course no array can be divided in half indefinitely. Eventually contains_vader will be called on an array with only one element that cannot be further divided in
