Comment by electroly

Same way as any other algorithm: with an explicit heap-allocated stack. I have a naive parser where I built operator precedence into the grammar as nested productions instead of using an algorithm like shunting yard. An input of ((((((1)))))) blew the stack. Converted it to an explicit stack and it was fine; deep for the call stack was not deep for my own heap-allocated stack. Nasty code, though--I think this serves as one of the counterexamples to the idea that the recursive code gets simpler when turning it into iteration. The original OP was talking more specifically about tail recursion, which a recursive descent parser won't be.