Niels Lohmann a3f42f3f95 Diff deeply nested values without recursing per nesting level ...

diff() descended into both values once per nesting level, and compared
them with operator== on every level on the way, which recurses as well.
Values nested deeply enough - 25,000 levels on an 8 MiB stack - exhausted
the call stack and terminated the process, although parse() accepts
them without complaint. On such a chain the per-level comparisons and
path strings also made diff() quadratic in time and memory.

Both the recursion and operator== only descend as far as the source is
nested. So diff() first checks, recursing at most diff_depth_limit()
(128) levels, whether the source is nested more deeply than that. If not
- all but a vanishing minority of values - the recursive algorithm
diffs it exactly as before, now as diff_recursively(). Otherwise
diff_iteratively() walks the two values on an explicit stack, emitting
the same operations in the same order. It does not compare arrays and
objects with operator== up front (equal ones yield no operations
anyway), keeps the path in one buffer instead of a new string per
level, and hands every subtree that is not nested too deeply back to
diff_recursively(), so equal parts are still skipped quickly.

The check costs one pass over the source. On a 3,000-object document
that is about 30% of diffing two equal values (which is just an
operator== call), about 10% of diffing values that differ in a few
places, and noise when arrays change length. Once operator== no longer
recurses (#5390), the check can go.

Tests check that the patch reproduces the target at every depth up to
300, for json and ordered_json, including reordered members. They also
check the exact operation for a difference deep inside, and diff values
nested 100,000 levels deep.

Fixes #5393 for diff().

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

2026-09-24 09:38:22 +02:00

..

json_fwd.hpp

📄 adjust year (#5044)

2026-01-01 20:00:39 +01:00

json.hpp

Diff deeply nested values without recursing per nesting level

2026-09-24 09:38:22 +02:00