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Fixes #3489

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claude bot commented Oct 24, 2025

Claude finished @thomhurst's task —— View job


Code Review for PR #3498

Reviewing the fix for IsEquivalentTo with nested collections in records.

Analysis

The fix addresses a specific issue where IsEquivalentTo was incorrectly using IEquatable<T> implementation for records with nested collections, rather than performing structural comparison.

Root Cause: Records implement IEquatable<T> by default, but their equality comparison uses reference equality for collection properties instead of structural equality.

Solution: Removed the IEquatable<T> check from StructuralEqualityComparer.Equals(), forcing all non-primitive types to use structural comparison.

Review Feedback

Code Quality & Best Practices

  • Clean implementation: The fix is minimal and surgical - removes only the problematic code path
  • Well-structured test: The test file follows project conventions with clear naming (Tests3489.cs)
  • Comprehensive test coverage: Tests both positive (should succeed) and negative (should fail) cases
  • Modern C# usage: Uses collection expressions, required properties, and record syntax appropriately

Test Coverage

  • Thorough scenarios: Tests nested collections in records with both matching and non-matching data
  • Edge case testing: Covers hierarchical structures with multiple levels of nesting
  • Assertion validation: Includes test for expected failure case with proper exception validation
  • Representative test data: Uses realistic Person/Children hierarchy that demonstrates the issue clearly

Security Considerations

  • No security risks introduced: The change removes code rather than adding new attack vectors
  • Maintains AOT compatibility: Proper use of [RequiresDynamicCode] attribute and trimming suppressions
  • Safe reflection usage: Existing reflection code already has proper nullability and error handling

⚠️ Performance Considerations

  • Potential performance impact: Removing the IEquatable<T> fast path means ALL objects (including those with efficient IEquatable<T> implementations) now go through structural comparison
  • Trade-off accepted: This is likely acceptable since IsEquivalentTo is meant for deep structural comparison, not fast equality checks
  • Consider optimization: Future enhancement could potentially check if the IEquatable<T> implementation is compiler-generated (for records) vs custom

Potential Bugs

  • No new bugs introduced: The fix correctly addresses the root issue
  • Maintains circular reference protection: The visited HashSet prevents infinite loops
  • Preserves existing functionality: All existing test patterns should continue working

📋 Minor Suggestions

  1. Documentation: Consider adding a comment in the code explaining why IEquatable<T> is skipped for structural comparison
  2. Test naming: The test class and methods have excellent descriptive names that clearly explain the scenario

Conclusion

This is a well-executed fix that addresses the specific issue without introducing side effects. The test coverage is comprehensive and the implementation is clean. The performance trade-off is reasonable given the semantic expectations of IsEquivalentTo.

Recommendation: ✅ Approve


@thomhurst thomhurst merged commit 1580dda into main Oct 24, 2025
13 checks passed
@thomhurst thomhurst deleted the bug/3489 branch October 24, 2025 12:43
This was referenced Oct 24, 2025
This was referenced Oct 27, 2025
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IsEquivalentTo does not work properly with nested collections

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