Quick- Alternate to recursive code

Question

what could be alternate to this code?

long pp (int b, int a)

{
if (a!=1)

return (b*pp (b,a-1));

else

return b;

}

Answer 1

long pp(int b, int a)
{
long res = b;
for (; a != 1; a--)
res *= b;
return res;
}

Answer 2

I believe the aim of the function is to raise b to the power of a.

pp(2, 2) returns 4
pp(3, 3) returns 27

etc.

Knowing the logic behind the code makes it easy to manifest a non-recursive version of it.

That said, it doesn't consider negative values and case 0.

Answer 3

can you explain it a bit @Hatsy?