Deep Equality for Nested Data | Dataford Interview Questions

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Problem

Patreon configuration data can contain nested objects and arrays, such as creator page settings or membership benefit definitions. Implement is_equal(a, b) to determine whether two JSON-like values are structurally and recursively equal.

Formal Specification

The inputs a and b are JSON-like Python values composed only of None, booleans, integers, floats, strings, lists, and dictionaries with string keys. Return True only when:

Both values have the same type and scalar values are equal.
Lists have the same length and equal elements at the same indices.
Dictionaries have the same key set and equal values for every key, regardless of insertion order.

You may assume the structures are acyclic. Do not convert the values to strings or sort serialized output. Implement the comparison directly.

Constraints

0 <= nesting depth <= 100
Each structure contains at most 10^4 total values
Dictionary keys are strings
Inputs are acyclic JSON-like values
Lists preserve order, while dictionary insertion order is ignored

Function Signature

def is_equal(a, b):