Problem Storing Data Recursively

Question

Gday, I got stuck with a bit of recursion today. Basically, I'm making a method which checks if any of the children of a node in a tree contain a prefix. Then I'll store these results into an array. Then I'll go through my array and see if any of their children contain a preffix, placing those new results in an array (perhaps the same one?)
I have a method I was going to use for the base case, .hasInternal() which checks if there are any children below it, but I can't quite get it all working recursively, there's no limit on the length of the prefix so I can't hardcode it.
InternalNode[] a = root.getInternalChildrenPrefix(prefix.charAt(x), x);
x++;
for(int k=0; k<a.length;k++){
InternalNode[k] b = a[k].getInternalChildrenPrefix(prefix.charAt(x), x);
Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

ALoneWolves wrote:
Ok. So this is from my radix tree class.
Please use the code tags when posting code (1. copy-and-paste your code, 2. select it, 3. press "CODE" just above the text area). The result will look like this:
     public int numberOfGenes(String prefix) {
          int matches = 0;
          if(root.hasInternal()!=true){
               String[] array = root.getLeafChildrenName();
               for(int i=0; i<array.length;i++){
                    for(int j=0; j<prefix.length();j++){
                         if(prefix.charAt(j)==array.charAt(j)){
                         matches = matches+1;
          else{
               int x = 0;
               if(x != prefix.length()){
               InternalNode[] a = root.getInternalChildrenPrefix(prefix.charAt(x), x);
               x++;
               for(int k=0; k<a.length;k++){
                    InternalNode[k] b = a[k].getInternalChildrenPrefix(prefix.charAt(x), x);
          return matches;
And from my internal node class I have:      public boolean hasInternal(){
          if(this.InternalChildren.size()>0){
               return true;
          return false;
     public InternalNode[] getInternalChildrenPrefix(char pref, int k){
          InternalNode[] samePrefixes = null;          
          for(int x = 0; x<InternalChildren.size(); x++){
          InternalNode a= InternalChildren.get(x);
          String aname = a.getPrefix();
          if(prefix.charAt(k)==pref){
               samePrefixes[x] = a;
          return samePrefixes;