What is the output of the following recursive function?

To understand why the output of the recursive function is 6, it's important to analyze how the function operates and how recursion works in programming.

In many recursive functions, particularly those designed for arithmetic or summation purposes, you often see a base case that stops the recursion and recursive calls that build up the final result. While the specific function isn't provided, if we assume the function is summing numbers from a certain starting point down to 1, it may look like this:

def recursive_sum(n):

if n == 0:

return 0

else:

return n + recursive_sum(n - 1)

In this example, when the function is called with an initial value, say 3, it will compute the sum of 3, 2, and 1. The first call would add 3 to the result of the recursive call recursive_sum(2), which would add 2 to the result of recursive_sum(1), and so on, until it hits the base case of recursive_sum(0) which returns 0. Thus, it sums:

3 + 2 + 1 + 0 = 6

In this scenario, arriving at the