"""
Exercise 6.3. A palindrome is a word that is spelled the same backward and forward, like “noon”
and “redivider”. Recursively, a word is a palindrome if the first and last letters are the same and the
middle is a palindrome.

my first attempt

"""

def is_palindrome(word):
    return check_palindrome(word, index_first = 0, index_last = (len(word)-1))

def check_palindrome(word, index_first, index_last):
    if index_last < index_first:
        return True

    print('index_first: {:d}-{:s} --- index_last: {:d}-{:s}' .format(index_first, word[index_first], index_last, word[index_last]))
    if word[index_first] == word[index_last]:
        index_first += 1
        index_last -= 1
        return check_palindrome(word, index_first, index_last)
    else:
        return False

print(is_palindrome('')) #True
print(is_palindrome('j')) #True
print(is_palindrome('kk')) #True
print(is_palindrome('noon')) #True
print(is_palindrome('abc')) #False