In computer programming, a recursive data type is a data type whose definition contains values of the same type. It is also known as a recursively defined, inductively defined or inductive data type. Data of recursive types are usually viewed as directed graphs.
An important application of recursion in computer science is in defining dynamic data structures such as Lists and Trees. Recursive data structures can dynamically grow to an arbitrarily large size in response to runtime requirements; in contrast, a static array's size requirements must be set at compile time.
