Recursion

When to use recursion? What is the cue when you have to use recursion?

Suppose I am to write a program that computes a factorial or checks if a string is a palindrome or prints all numbers from a certain range? I could use loops for those but I could use recursion?

What's the advantage of either? Is there something that recursion could do that loops could not?

>>9
Then you should only use recursion for recursive data structures and when a recursive function is shorter than the respective loop (assuming you don't need a break statement).