Recursion is a powerful – in fact, an essential – technique that all programmers need to be comfortable using. But initially it can be hard to grasp. How can a function call itself? What happens when the values of variables change from one recursive function call to another. And what the heck are ‘stack frames’ and why do you need to know about them? This short video gives you an overview of a recursive function and how it works.

I’ll post some more information on recursion in my next blog post. If you need an in-depth guide to recursion, debugging recursion, recursing tree structures, disk directories and more, you may want to take a look at my book, The Little Book Of Recursion. Or, if you prefer a more interactive guide to recursion, see my online video course.