Piffle. Recursion is neither magical nor obscure, especially when dealing with recursive data structures (like parse trees).

I never said it was magical or obscure. Only that for a programmer trained to think iteratively (as most are), the concept of recursion can sometimes take some getting used to.

Clearly to you it is nothing magical, as you understand it quite well (as evidenced by many of your recent posts, and particulary your ones on Haskell). But to some, it is a concept that does not sit as easily.