recursion (computer science)

Recursion is like a game of "telephone" in computer science. It's when a computer program follows the same set of steps over and over again. A computer program can keep calling itself, each time with different information, until it's done what it needs to do. This makes certain tasks much easier for the computer to do. For example, when you look at a directory (a folder) on your computer and find more folders inside, the computer is using recursion to look inside each of those folders.