Making sense of recursion patterns

Abstract

Recursion patterns (such as “foldr” and elaborations thereof) have the potential to supplant explicit recursion in a viable subrecursive functional style of programming. Especially however in order to be able to eschew explicit recursion entirely, even in the definition of new recursion patterns, it's essential to identify and validate a minimal set of basic recursion patterns. The immediate plausibility of foldr is validated by its application to the implementation of functions and recursion patterns, and especially by an abstract characterization of the programming devices used in these applications used to overcome complementary information deficiencies in data and control.