Understanding how recursive functions work

Question

As the title explains I have a very fundamental programming question which I have just not been able to grok yet. Filtering out all of the (extremely clever) \"In order to

Answer 1

A little bit off-topic, I know, but... try looking up recursion in Google... You'll see by example what it means :-)

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Earlier versions of Google returned the following text (cited from memory):

Recursion

See Recursion

On September 10th 2014, the joke about recursion has been updated:

Recursion

Did you mean: Recursion

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For another reply, see this answer.