Tail Recursion for Fibonacci

Last Updated : 26 May, 2022

Write a tail recursive function for calculating the n-th Fibonacci number.
Examples :

Input : n = 4 Output : fib(4) = 3  Input : n = 9 Output : fib(9) = 34

Prerequisites : Tail Recursion, Fibonacci numbers
A recursive function is tail recursive when the recursive call is the last thing executed by the function.

Writing a tail recursion is little tricky. To get the correct intuition, we first look at the iterative approach of calculating the n-th Fibonacci number.

int fib(int n) {   int a = 0, b = 1, c, i;   if (n == 0)     return a;   for (i = 2; i <= n; i++)   {      c = a + b;      a = b;      b = c;   }   return b; }

Here there are three possibilities related to n :-

n == 0

n == 1

n > 1

First two are trivial. We focus on discussion of the case when n > 1.
In our iterative approach for n > 1,
We start with

a = 0 b = 1

For n-1 times we repeat following for ordered pair (a,b)
Though we used c in actual iterative approach, but the main aim was as below :-

(a, b) = (b, a+b)

We finally return b after n-1 iterations.
Hence we repeat the same thing this time with the recursive approach. We set the default values

a = 0 b = 1

Here we’ll recursively call the same function n-1 times and correspondingly change the values of a and b.
Finally, return b.
If its case of n == 0 OR n == 1, we need not worry much!
Here is implementation of tail recursive fibonacci code.

C++

   // Tail Recursive Fibonacci
// implementation
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
 
// A tail recursive function to
// calculate n th fibonacci number
int fib(int n, int a = 0, int b = 1)
{
    if (n == 0)
        return a;
    if (n == 1)
        return b;
    return fib(n - 1, b, a + b);
}
 
// Driver Code
int main()
{
    int n = 9;
    cout << "fib(" << n << ") = "
         << fib(n) << endl;
    return 0;
}
 
  

Java

   // Tail Recursive 
// Fibonacci implementation
 
class GFG
{
    // A tail recursive function to
    // calculate n th fibonacci number
    static int fib(int n, int a, int b )
    { 
         
        if (n == 0)
            return a;
        if (n == 1)
            return b;
        return fib(n - 1, b, a + b);
    }
     
    public static void main (String[] args) 
    {
        int n = 9;
        System.out.println("fib(" + n +") = "+ 
                                 fib(n,0,1) ); 
    }
}
 
  

Python3

   # A tail recursive function to 
# calculate n th fibonacci number
def fib(n, a = 0, b = 1):
    if n == 0:
        return a
    if n == 1:
        return b
    return fib(n - 1, b, a + b);
 
# Driver Code
n = 9;
print("fib("+str(n)+") = "+str(fib(n)))
 
  

C#

   // C# Program for Tail
// Recursive Fibonacci 
using System;
 
class GFG
{
     
    // A tail recursive function to
    // calculate n th fibonacci number
    static int fib(int n, int a , int b )
    { 
        if (n == 0)
            return a;
        if (n == 1)
            return b;
        return fib(n - 1, b, a + b);
    }
     
    // Driver Code
    public static void Main () 
    {
        int n = 9;
        Console.Write("fib(" + n +") = " + 
                           fib(n, 0, 1) ); 
    }
}
 
// This code is contributed 
// by nitin mittal.
 
  

PHP

   <?php
// A tail recursive PHP function to
// calculate n th fibonacci number
function fib($n, $a = 0, $b = 1)
{
    if ($n == 0)
        return $a;
    if ($n == 1)
        return $b;
    return fib($n - 1, $b, $a + $b);
}
 
// Driver Code
$n = 9;
echo "fib($n) = " , fib($n);
return 0;
 
// This code is contributed by nitin mittal.
?>
 
  

Javascript

   <script>
 
// A tail recursive Javascript function to
// calculate n th fibonacci number
 
function fib(n, a = 0, b = 1)
{
    if (n == 0){
        return a;
    }
    if (n == 1){
        return b;
    }
    return fib(n - 1, b, a + b);
}
 
// Driver Code
let n = 9;
document.write(`fib(${n}) =  ${fib(n)}`);
 
 
// This code is contributed by _saurabh_jaiswal.
 
</script>
 
  

Output :

fib(9) = 34

Analysis of Algorithm

Time Complexity: O(n) Auxiliary Space : O(n)

Sum of Fibonacci Numbers

Pratik Chhajer

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Tail Recursion for Fibonacci

C++

Java

Python3

C#

PHP

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