Cyclical data structure with assert.calledWith yields "InternalError: too much recursion"

[ende76]

Description

When implementing cyclical data structures (doubly-linked lists, tree structures with parent references), and then using assert.calledWith() on a spy/stub, an InternalError is thrown.

assert.equals() appears to have the same problem.

Example

A minimal example can be found at https://github.com/ende76/buster.internalerror . The test treenode module-> method has() -> should call find() on child nodes should fail, but instead errors.

Naive analysis

From an outside view, it seems that in deep-comparison cases, cyclical structures would have to be recognized and avoided, which might be non-trivial.

[meisl]

node's debugger gets it right, maybe it's possible to get hands on that? ...but really only "maybe" since this might well be internal to V8.

Here's the quick example I tried (on Win, node 0.6.11):

//vicious.js
var heaven = {
  temperature: 'convenient'
};
var hell = {
  temperature: 'well, not so...',
  opposite: heaven
};
heaven.opposite = hell;
debugger;

yields when run:

d:\>node debug vicious
< debugger listening on port 5858
connecting... ok
debug> c
break in d:\vicious.js:10
  8 };
  9 heaven.opposite = hell;
 10 debugger;
 11
 12 });
debug> repl
Press Ctrl + C to leave debug repl
> hell
{ temperature: 'well, not so...',
  opposite:
   { temperature: 'convenient',
     opposite:
      { temperature: 'well, not so...',
        opposite: [Object] } } }
> heaven
{ temperature: 'convenient',
  opposite:
   { temperature: 'well, not so...',
     opposite:
      { temperature: 'convenient',
        opposite: [Object] } } }
>

[cjohansen]

I just did a quick test locally with @meisl's example (heaven and hell), and cannot reproduce the error with neither assert.equals nor calledWith, but I'll investigate @ende76's example project too.

[cjohansen]

@ende76 Your sample project fails on my machine (as expected). Can you confirm that this bug is fixed?

[ende76]

@cjohansen Sorry, there was a small problem with a non-necessary and non-existent dependency in buster.js, which might have looked like a correct test failure. I have fixed the configuration now, and still get the internal error.

Firefox 13.0.1, OS X 10.7 (Lion): .......E...                                                                      
Error: Firefox 13.0.1, OS X 10.7 (Lion) treenode module method has() should call find() on child nodes
InternalError: too much recursion

1 test case, 11 tests, 11 assertions, 0 failures, 1 error, 0 timeouts
Finished in 0.494s`

[ende76]

@cjohansen To make sure that you're not hunting bugs that only exist because I'm on an obsolete version, here's some relevant output:

Lily:buster.internalerror thpickert$ buster -v
Buster.JS version 0.6.0 Beta 4
Lily:buster.internalerror thpickert$ node -v
v0.8.1

[cjohansen]

Figured it out. It has already been solved. You can verify by doing this:

git clone git://github.com/ende76/buster.internalerror.git
cd buster.internalerror/node_modules/buster/node_modules
rm -fr buster-format
git clone https://github.com/busterjs/buster-format.git
cd ../../../
./node_modules/buster/bin/buster-test