I recently found a question tagged with recursive, and my first immediate thought went to recursive function calls in programming. Then my thoughts went to the -r option you can specify with most command-line based utilities. And finally, my thoughts went to simply traversing a folder and all subfolders/files.

So, Super User: do you really think the recursive tag is meaningful?

I just believe there's too many different uses/definitions of the word in the computer world. If a user wants to find a question/answer using a recursive command line, couldn't he/she just search for the actual -r flag?

Also, there's only at most four questions tagged with both recursive and another particular command-line utility (e.g. 4 questions tagged both recursive and ls), and it drops off of there. For reference, a list of the first few related tags:

• linux × 13
• command-line × 8
• folder × 8
• ubuntu × 5
• windows × 5
• find × 4
• bash × 4
• ls × 4
• wget × 4
• html × 3
• chmod × 3
• download × 3
• windows-7 × 3

I recently found a question tagged with recursive, and my first immediate thought went to recursive function calls in programming. Then my thoughts went to the -r option you can specify with most command-line based utilities. And finally, my thoughts went to simply traversing a folder and all subfolders/files.

So, Super User: do you really think the recursive tag is meaningful?

I just believe there's too many different uses/definitions of the word in the computer world. If a user wants to find a question/answer using a recursive command line, couldn't he/she just search for the actual -r flag?

Right now, there are a total of 42 questions tagged recursive. Also, there's only at most four questions tagged with both recursive and another particular command-line utility (e.g. 4 questions tagged both recursive and ls), and it drops off of there. For reference, a list of the first few related tags:

• linux × 13
• command-line × 8
• folder × 8
• ubuntu × 5
• windows × 5
• find × 4
• bash × 4
• ls × 4
• wget × 4
• html × 3
• chmod × 3
• download × 3
• windows-7 × 3

I think this better illustrates my point. There doesn't seem to be any particular connection between the recursive tag and any others, especially when it comes to particular CLI utilities.