ActionScript 3.0 :: Understanding A Basic Scripting Concept

I'm currently reading the book Learning ActionScript 3.0 and have dificulties understanding some programing basics due to my total lack of prior programing knowledge.For example now I'm looking at this script from the book that traces a list of all display objects on the stage and their children:[code]I understand everything except one thing. When there is an object with children (DisplayObjectContainer), the function traces the object but doesn't proceed and calls itself starting all over again this time analyzing the first child of the object. And if the child also have children itself the list will branch out until there is an object without children.What I don't understand is how the function at this point knows how to return to the last parent object and continue to analyzes� its other children if any.For example when the function analyzes the stage of a scene with the following content how does the function know to continue analyzing child0. To me, looking at the code, I would expect the function to exit after listing [object StaticText]. I have hard time understanding what makes the function go back to largeContainer and continues with its child0 and so on.[code]This all what the book says regarding this which is not enough for me to understand this process:the function calls itself again. passing in the object currentlybeing inspected. This concept is called recursion. A function calling itself mayseem redundant, but it can be very useful. In this case, each time the functionis called, it receives a new display object to analyze, so the function reportsthe contents of that specific display object. The result is a complete walkthroughof all display objects, no matter how many children each may have.