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Functions may call themselves in a RECURSIVE fashion.  For example, a function to raise a floating-point number to an integral power may be written:

    float  expon(float  x, int y)
    {
        if (y>0)
            return x * expon(x,y-1);
        else
            return 1.;
    }

The scope of the formal parameters (and local variables, if any) of a function is the body of the function, and separate values for these variables are maintained for each invocation of the function.  Thus there is no conflict when passing the value y-1 as an argument to the expon() function, even though the identifier y is itself used as a parameter of the called function.

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3.5  Recursion