characterized by processes which can be indefinitely repeatedly applied to their own output, such as algorithms which create branching and subdivision

Characteristic of an action capable of being indefinitely reapplied to the results of its own application.

Think of a branch on a tree. Stemming from that branch you have other branches, and from those branches more branches. Imagine each branch can have leaves. This is a fairly accurate representation of your file system under Windows and DOS. If I ask you to recursively examine the leaves of branch "X", then you would start at branch X and examine all of its leaves, you would then examine it's "children" branches or sub-branches, until you had visited every branch. Well - the branches are directories, the sub-branches are sub-directories, and the leaves are your files.

A program or routine that re-executes itself or repeats an action over and over. For example, the find ( 17.1) program moves through a directory tree recursively, doing something in each directory.

Strictly speaking, a set or function is recursive if it is computable; in the usual sense of the word, however, a function is said to be recursive if its definition makes reference to itself.

involving self-reference (in computer science and logic) a definition of a function or procedure is recursive if it involves reference to the function or procedure being defined, i.e. if during evaluation the function or procedure may invoke itself (usually with different arguments).

This is a programming term. It describes a process where a function or procedure is able to call itself within the function or procedure.

A software procedure that calls itself.

A computer program that calls itself.

A program routine that calls itself. Recursion occurs if a section of code contains an instruction to include another file that in itself contains instructions to include yet another file. This process must be controlled so that it does not occur indefinately.

Defining a program in such a way that it may call upon itself.

Referring back to itself. A method that calls intself until some base condition is true.

In a recursive structure, one instance of a syntactic category dominates another instance of the same category. The relation between the two categories may be immediate domination (the parent-child relation), but needn't be (a simple ancestor-descendant relation is sufficient). The syntactic category in question is called a recursive category.

A relationship between two instances of the same entity, as in "recursive data design".

of or relating to a recursion

In a recursive structure, one instance of a syntactic category contains, or dominates, another instance of the same category. The syntactic category in question is called a recursive category. The relation between the two instances of the same category may be immediate dominance (the parent-child relation), but needn't be (a simple ancestor-descendant relation is sufficient).