Fibonacci Series program in C ( With and Without recursion)

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Last Updated : 23/11/2022

Posted By :- Vinnu

In this article, i have explained about what is fibonacci in C and how to create program for fibonacci series in C, with and without recursion. Let's understand about it and create it's program in C.

Fibonacci series is a series of natural numbers where next number is equivalent to the sum of previous two numbers i.e. fn = fn-1 + fn-2.In fibonacci sequence each item is the sum of the previous two. So, you wrote a recursive algorithm, for example, recursive function example for up to 5

fibonacci(5) = fibonacci(4) + fibonacci(3)

fibonacci(3) = fibonacci(2) + fibonacci(1)

fibonacci(4) = fibonacci(3) + fibonacci(2)

fibonacci(2) = fibonacci(1) + fibonacci(0)

The first two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are either 1 and 1, or 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two numbers.

First Term = 0
Second term = 1
Third Term = First + Second = 0+1 =1
Fourth term = Second + Third =1+1 = 2
Fifth Term = Third + Fourth = 2+1 = 3 and so on...

So for example fibonacci series upto 10 numbers will look like

1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55

Let's take a look at it's program.

Program for Fibonacci in C

In the below code, we are using while loop to add the last 2 numbers and print the result until 'nth' number.

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    int i, n, firstTerm=0, secondTerm=1, sum=0;
    printf("\nEnter number of terms required in Fibonacci Series: ");
    scanf("%d",&n);
    
     // Showing the first two term of the Fibonacci Series 
    printf("\nFibonacci Series is:\n\n\n %d %d ", firstTerm, secondTerm); 
    //start i =2
    i=2;    
    //i starts from 2, as the first two terms of the series have already been shown
    while (i<n)
    {
        sum=firstTerm+secondTerm;
        firstTerm=secondTerm;
        secondTerm=sum;
        ++i;
        printf("%d ",sum);
    }
    return 0;
}

Output:

Enter number of terms required in Fibonacci Series: 8

Fibonacci Series is:


 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13

Fibonacci program in C using recursion

In the Recursive way to print the Fibonacci series, we will keep calling same function 'Fibonacci' until nth number and print the sum of last 2 numbers.

#include<stdio.h>
 
int Fibonacci(int);
 
int main()
{
   int n, i = 0, c;
 
   scanf("%d",&n);
 
   printf("Fibonacci series\n");
 
   for ( c = 1 ; c <= n ; c++ )
   {
     //function is called recursively using for loop
      printf("%d\n", Fibonacci(i));
      i++; 
   }
 
   return 0;
}
 //fibonacci series function
int Fibonacci(int n)
{
   if ( n == 0 )
      return 0;
   else if ( n == 1 )
      return 1;
   else
      return ( Fibonacci(n-1) + Fibonacci(n-2) );
}

Output:

Enter number of terms required in Fibonacci Series: 8
Fibonacci series
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13

Recursion method is less efficient as it involves function calls which uses stack, also there are chances of stack overflow if function is called frequently for calculating larger Fibonacci numbers.

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