Recursive power function: Why does this work if there's no initial return value?

Question

because power(base, exponent) has no return value unless exponent is 0, initially, shouldn't power(base, exponent -1) return 'undefined', and therefore be unmultipliable, initially? So, I am having trouble following the logic of this code. Why/how does it work?

function power(base, exponent) {
  if (exponent == 0)
    return 1;
  else
    return base * power(base, exponent - 1);
}

Answer 1

Look at what happens if you try to calculate 5^3:

power(5, 3)  ... this should give us 125, let's see if it does...

function power(base, exponent) {    // base = 5, exponent = 3
  if (exponent == 0)                // nope, exponent != 0
    return 1;
  else
    return base * power(base, exponent - 1);  // return 5 * power(5, 2)
}

... what is power(5, 2) ? ...

function power(base, exponent) {    // base = 5, exponent = 2
  if (exponent == 0)                // nope, exponent != 0
    return 1;
  else
    return base * power(base, exponent - 1);  // return 5 * power(5, 1)
}

... what is power(5, 1) ? ...

function power(base, exponent) {    // base = 5, exponent = 1
  if (exponent == 0)                // nope, exponent != 0
    return 1;
  else
    return base * power(base, exponent - 1);  // return 5 * power(5, 0)
}

... what is power(5, 0) ? ...

function power(base, exponent) {    // base = 5, exponent = 0
  if (exponent == 0)                // yup, exponent != 0
    return 1;                       // return 1
  else
    return base * power(base, exponent - 1);
}

... putting that together, in reverse order as we walk back up the stack...

power(5, 0) = returns 1
power(5, 1) = 5 * power(5, 0) = 5 * 1 =  returns 5
power(5, 2) = 5 * power(5, 1) = 5 * 5 =  returns 25
power(5, 3) = 5 * power(5, 2) = 5 * 25 =  returns 125

... so, power(5, 3) returns 125, as it should.

Answer 2

It could be more concise:

function power(base, exponent) {
  return exponent == 0? 1 : base * power(base, --exponent);
}

Howerver an iterative solution is very much faster:

function powerNR(base, exp) {
  var result = 1;
  while(exp--) {
    result *= base;
  }
  return result;
}