I've been studying about recursive functions, and apparently, they're functions that call themselves, and don't use iterations/loops (otherwise it wouldn't be a recursive function).

However, while surfing the web for examples (the 8-queens-recursive problem), I found this function:

private boolean placeQueen(int rows, int queens, int n) {
    boolean result = false;
    if (row < n) {
        while ((queens[row] < n - 1) && !result) {
            queens[row]++;
            if (verify(row,queens,n)) {
                ok = placeQueen(row + 1,queens,n);
            }
        }
        if (!result) {
            queens[row] = -1;
        }
    }else{
        result = true;
    }
    return result;
}

There is a while loop involved.

... so I'm a bit lost now. Can I use loops or not?