Why does it not return 1?

Question

Hi, so I was learning C++ and recursion confused me because isn't it suppised to return 1 in this example below

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int factorialFinder(int x){
if (x==1){
return 1;
}
else{
return x*factorialFinder(x-1);

int main(){
cout << factorialFinder(5);

return 0;
}

Answer 1

It return 5 * the result of findFactorial(4) which is 4 * the result of findFactorial(3) etc...

Anyway, return doesn’t end the entire recursive function with that value, it ends that iteration of it.

So if I made a function:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int func(int a) {
if (a == 0) return 63;
else return func(0) * 2;
}

int main() {
cout << func(0) << endl;
//63
cout << func(4);
//126
}

func(4) returns the double of func(0) because the return in func(0) only returns for that func. Otherwise, since main() is a function, if you called a function with a return value in main(), it would end the program.

Answer 2

I am missing two curly (closing) braces in your code, before int main. Like this the code returns 120:
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int factorialFinder(int x) {
if (x==1){
return 1;
}
else{
return x*factorialFinder(x-1);
}
}

int main(){
cout << factorialFinder(5);
return 0;
}

It returns recursively 1, 2, 6, 24 and finally 120. That is what you see, the last one.