In C99 (or Java) I would write the factorial function iteratively like this:
int factorial(int n)
{
int result = 1;
for (int i = 2; i <= n; i++)
{
result *= i;
}
return result;
}
C is not a functional language and you can't rely on tail-call optimization. So don't use recursion in C (or Java) unless you need to.
Just because factorial is often used as the first example for recursion it doesn't mean you need recursion to compute it.
This will overflow silently if n is too big, as is the custom in C (and Java).
If the numbers int can represent are too small for the factorials you want to compute then choose another number type. long long if it needs be just a little bit bigger, float or double if n isn't too big and you don't mind some imprecision, or big integers if you want the exact values of really big factorials.
