What are the potential benefits of using recursion in PHP functions, as demonstrated in the forum thread?

Issue: The forum thread discusses the potential benefits of using recursion in PHP functions. Recursion allows a function to call itself within its own definition, which can be useful for solving problems that can be broken down into smaller, similar subproblems. This can lead to more concise and elegant code, especially when dealing with tasks like traversing nested data structures or calculating factorials. PHP Code Snippet:

function factorial($n) {
    if ($n <= 1) {
        return 1;
    } else {
        return $n * factorial($n - 1);
    }
}

echo factorial(5); // Output: 120