An easy way to do it is to just pass a separate "depth" integer parameter into the recursive function. It then passes that +1 when it makes a recursive call. At the top of the function, if the depth is above your chosen limit, you bail out in some way instead of continuing to recurse.

> you detect that situation and make it work.

If you really do need to "make it work" for arbitrarily-deeply nested inputs, then you are actually better off using a heap-allocated stack instead of recursion.

But in most cases, a recursive implementation will only exceed the stack if the input is malicious or pathological and you can just fail in that case.

I didn't actually say that, but even supposing I meant that, walking a 3D mesh in a way that requires you to keep stack context sounds like a pretty unlikely/niche scenario, so it seems even that stronger statement is true.

It's fairly intuitive to walk a mesh recursively by following adjacent edges and you have to keep track of where you've been which means storing a lot of data somewhere. Maybe there are better algorithms but sometimes you just reach for what's most obvious. I suppose there are many analogous applications of traversing a graph structure.