Niels Lohmann 0d01d6ae90 Classify leaves with operator<=> itself past the nesting bound (#5686) ...

* Classify leaves with operator<=> itself past the nesting bound

In C++20, an ordered comparison past the nesting bound classified a pair of
leaves by asking == first and then order_leaves(), which calls < and > -
both derived from <=>. For a pair of binary values with the same bytes but a
different subtype, == reports them unequal, while <=> (through
std::vector<std::uint8_t>::operator<=>) reports them equivalent, so the pair
ended the comparison as unordered instead of letting the next element
decide - unlike an array or object within the bound, which compares such a
pair with its own operator<=> and gets equivalent. So operator<=>, and the
<, <=, >, >= derived from it, could give a different result for the same two
values depending on how deeply the values were nested, or unordered at every
depth with JSON_NO_THREAD_LOCAL defined.

compare_leaves() now classifies such a pair in C++20 with operator<=> itself
instead, matching how a value within the bound is compared; the equality-only
and pre-C++20 ordered cases are unchanged. Which of the three runs is chosen
by overloading on std::integral_constant<bool, Ordered>, the same tag
dispatch order_leaves() already uses, rather than a runtime "if (Ordered)" on
a template parameter, which MSVC would flag as a constant condition (C4127).

Added a regression test to unit-comparison.cpp that nests such a pair 0, 127,
128 and 200 levels deep (127 stays within the 128-level bound, 128 and 200
do not) and checks that operator<=> and operator< agree at every depth.

Fixes #5654.

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

* Drop the version history note for a bug that was never released

The regression came from #5390, which is not in any release. Addresses review comment by @gregmarr.

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

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

2026-10-04 11:46:29 +02:00

..

nlohmann

Classify leaves with operator<=> itself past the nesting bound (#5686)

2026-10-04 11:46:29 +02:00