Adjective

1. drawing upon itself, referring back.

   The recursive nature of stories which borrow from each other

2. of an expression, each term of which is determined by applying a formula to preceding terms
3. of a program or function that calls itself

   Example: the factorial function -

   $f(0)\; =\; 1$

   $f(n)\; =\; n\; \backslash times\; f(n-1)$ where n is any natural number greater than 0

4. which can be computed by a theoretical model of a computer, in a finite amount of time
5. whose characteristic function is recursive (4)

Related terms

• recursivity
• recurrent
• recurrence
• recursion
• recursive conundrum
• co-recursive