Fibonacci Benchmark

Benchmark of recursive and iterative Fibonacci number generation

Fibonacci Sequence is defined as A series of numbers in which each number ( Fibonacci number ) is the sum of the two preceding numbers. The simplest is the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.

Source code of recursive, iterative and tail recursive Fibonacci methods are listed below. They are the same for both C++ and C#. Tail recursive version is contributed by Peter Becker.

int recursive_fib(int n)
{
    if (n < 2)
    {
        return n;
    }
    else
    {
        return recursive_fib(n - 2) + recursive_fib(n - 1);
    }
}

int iterative_fib(int n)
{
    int second_fib = 0, first_fib = 1, current_fib = 0; 
    for(int i=2; i<=n; i++)
    {    
        current_fib = second_fib+first_fib;    
        second_fib = first_fib;    
        first_fib = current_fib;  
    }  
    return current_fib; 
}

int tail_recursion_fib(int n, int a = 0, int b = 1)
{
    if (n == 0)
        return a;
    if (n == 1)
        return b;
    return tail_recursion_fib(n - 1, b, a + b);
}

C++ Benchmark result for finding fibonacci of 42

recursive_fib timing: 1051ms
iterative_fib timing:    0ms
tail_recursion_fib timing:    0ms

C# Benchmark result for finding fibonacci of 42

recursive_fib timing:01.179
iterative_fib timing:00.000
tail_recursion_fib timing:00.000

C# timing is just slightly behind C++. We will add a global variable named count to keep track of how many times the recursive method is called for fibonacci of 8.

int count = 0;
int recursive_fib_with_count(int n)
{
    ++count;
    if (n < 2)
    {
        return n;
    }
    else
    {
        return recursive_fib_with_count(n - 2) + recursive_fib_with_count(n - 1);
    }
}

Output is as below

recursive_fib(8) total number of recursive calls:67

We can see recursive_fib is a very inefficient way of generating Fibonacci. During interview, remember never to give recursive_fib as an answer because this is not what interviewers are looking out for!