Recursive Function Scanning String to Add ASCII - c++

Question

So I'm trying to figure out how to do this:
Write a recursive function that will sum all of the char's within a C String.
I'm a little rusty in doing this normally, but I finally got it to work with a normal for loop:
int countstr(string s)
{
int sum = 0;
if(s.length() == 0)
{
exit(0);
}
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < s.size(); i++)
{
sum += s[i];
}
return sum;
}
I can then go inside main and do this:
int main ()
{
cout << "This word adds up to " << countstr("HELLO") << " in ASCII " << endl;
}
and everything works as it should, counting and adding up the characters in the string via their ASCII numbers.
The problem I'm having is trying to figure out how this is typed up so it works recursively. I know I need to forgo the for loop in lieu of calling up the function itself, but I don't know what to use instead of the sum += s[i]; that I have going in my for loop. I've been looking around in the C string library, but I don't see anything that can replace the [i] that the for loop calls up. Does anyone know what I should be using to do this? I'm not looking for an answer in code, just need help in what I should be using to make this happen.

Answer 1

This is one of many ways to do it.
int reccountstr(string s, int i){
if(s.size() == i)
return (0 + s[i]);
else
return reccountstr(s, i + 1) + s[i];
}
And then in main you just call it with a zero initial argument.
cout << "This word adds up to " << reccountstr("HELLO", 0) << " in ASCII " << endl;

Answer 2

Skeleton could be like this:
int countlen(const char * str)
{
if (condition)
return 0;
else
return *str + countlen(str + 1);
}
The rest is up to you :)

Answer 3

int countString(char sample[], int i)
{
if(sample[i] == 0)
return 0;
else
return(1 + countString(sample, i+1));
}
This could be one solution, where if the current character read is not null (0, or '\0') it will return 1 + countString(sample, i + 1) where i is the current character index to be read.
Once it reaches null it returns 0. So for a character length of three, it will do 1 + 1 + 1 + 0. You can call the function with printf("%d\n", countString(yourStringName, 0)).
So your base case here is character[index] == empty
Your inductive case is 1 + function(stringName, index + 1), roughly speaking.
Also, this is a little outside the scope of your question, but you can also make this more efficient by avoiding constantly building up the stack. A way to do this is to create another variable inside the function that continuously accumulates the total count. For more info on this see this link on tail recursion:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TailRecursion
More memory conservative version:
int countString(char sample[], int i, int total)
{
if(sample[i] == 0)
return total;
else
return countString(sample, i+1, ++total);
}
You can call this with printf("%d\n", countString(sample, 0, 0));