Understanding double recursion

Question

I\'m able to comprehend recursion easily if there is just one recursive call within a function. However, I am really getting confused when I see two or more recursive calls

Answer 1

It seems to me that you have confused the running order of the recursive calls. Keep in mind that, second call (maxval2) does not get called until the first call (maxval1) finishes. maxval1 call itself has two more recursive calls within itself and so on. So without all these inner recursive calls being finished, the program does not reach the maxval2 line.

Try debugging instead of running the code (in Eclipse for e.g.) and move step by step to see how it actually goes about each recursive call.