Return the first member of duplicate keys from lookups again

Looking up the last member of a duplicate key cannot stop at a match, so
every lookup scanned the whole object (1.6 to 3.4 times slower for small
objects). operator[](key), at, find, value, contains, count, and JSON
pointer resolution return the first member again, as yyjson and simdjson
do; materialize() and get<map>() keep the last value, as parse().

The documentation says so in the feature page and on each lookup page,
and explains how to get the value parse() would give. The integer index
templates and the discarded chaining of operator[] stay.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann committed 2026-10-11 10:28:03 +02:00
1 parent 10ec5a0381
commit decf6de9c7
15 files changed
+153 -80

No files matched your search

@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ No-throw guarantee: this function never throws exceptions.
## Complexity
1. Linear in the number of members: as for [`ordered_json`](../ordered_json.md), members are compared one after
another, in document order, scanning all of them, since the last match is wanted. Each comparison first checks the
another, in document order, stopping at the first match. Each comparison first checks the
key's length -- already known from the index, without reading the key bytes -- before comparing its content.
2. Linear in the number of reference tokens of `ptr` and, for each token, in the number of members of the object at
that level or the index into the array -- as for [`operator[]`](operator[].md#complexity) and
@@ -41,6 +41,13 @@ No-throw guarantee: this function never throws exceptions.
## Notes
!!! warning "Duplicate keys: the first member wins"
If the source text repeats a key, this resolves to the *first* member with it, not to the last one that
[`materialize()`](materialize.md) and `parse()` keep. See the [Notes on duplicate keys](operator[].md#notes) of
`operator[]` and [Duplicate keys](../../features/json_view.md#duplicate-keys) for the reasons and for how to get
the last value.
Overload 1 always returns `#!cpp false` when the value is not an object -- including a [discarded](is_discarded.md)
view.