isEqual does not works if one object has circular references

[zsilbi]

Environment

ohash v2.0.2
Node v23.8.0

Reproduction

Added failing tests for serialize(): https://github.com/zsilbi/ohash/tree/test-serialize-consistency

Describe the bug

I switched to isEqual() from an older library in one of my projects, but it does not behave as I expected. Objects with the same structure are indexed based on their reference, leading to differences in their serialized form.

import { serialize } from "ohash";
import { isEqual } from "ohash/utils";

const a = { value: 1 };

const vvv = {
  value: { value: 1 },
  values: [{ value: 1 }, { value: 1 }],
};

const aaa = {
  value: a,
  values: [a, a],
};

isEqual(vvv, aaa); // false
serialize(vvv); // "{value:{value:1},values:[{value:1},{value:1},]}"
serialize(aaa); // "{value:{value:1},values:[#1,#1,]}"

This indexing feature helps handle circular references but makes isEqual() unreliable for my use case.

Would it be possible to improve this behavior, or should the documentation be updated to clarify the exact mechanics of this function?

[pi0]

Thanks for the explanations.

It seems a bug to me, I think we can add an option to disable circular counters and use it by default for isEqual

[pi0]

Testing more, while your case above can be handled by disabling feature (it is duplicate reference), there seems no easy way to distinguish from an actual circular reference like const obj = {}; obj.foo = obj;

[zsilbi]

Testing more, while your case above can be handled by disabling feature (it is duplicate reference), there seems no easy way to distinguish from an actual circular reference like const obj = {}; obj.foo = obj;

My first idea would be to capture the output of non-circular objects from the serialization and insert them back if they are available: zsilbi@689f5e0

The tests pass (other than increased the bundle size) but I think there can be more edge cases where this can fail.