Recursion has more expressive power than iterative looping constructs. I say this because a while loop is equivalent to a tail recursive function and recursive functions need not be tail recursive.

In this article, we study some new characterizations of primitive recursive functions based on restricted forms of primitive recursion, improving the pioneering work of R. M. Robinson and M. D.

This Java recursion tutorial shows you how to create a recursive Java factorial function and compares these methods to iterative ones.