Non-recursive traversal of hierarchical data structures is disclosed. Elements inside a hierarchical data structure are processed beginning at a first level of the hierarchical data structure. In the event that a branch point associated with a second level of the hierarchical data structure is encountered, a marker data associated with a location of the branch point within the hierarchical data structure is stored inside a user allocated data structure, and the marker stored in the user allocated data structure is used to enable elements, if any, in the second level and any remaining elements in the first level, if any, to be processed without recursion.