The maximum hard limit that `util.inspect()` could theoretically handle
is the maximum string size. That is ~2 ** 28 on 32 bit systems and
~2 ** 30 on 64 bit systems.
Due to the recursive algorithm a complex object could easily exceed
that limit without throwing an error right away and therefore
crashing the application by exceeding the heap limit.
`util.inspect()` is fast enough to compute 128 MB of data below one
second on an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5600U CPU. This hard limit allows
to inspect arbitrary big objects from now on without crashing the
application or blocking the event loop significantly.
PR-URL: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/22756
Reviewed-By: Matteo Collina <matteo.collina@gmail.com>
Reviewed-By: James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com>
Reviewed-By: Anna Henningsen <anna@addaleax.net>
Reviewed-By: John-David Dalton <john.david.dalton@gmail.com>
