deep equality check failing message is very different compare to Jest

[ghiscoding]

Clear and concise description of the problem

I recently switched from Jest to Vitest and very often in Jest I would use the .toBe() instead of .toEqual() since I never remember which one is which and in Jest when we do use the wrong one then we have a great useful message telling us that we probably meant to use another validity check. This is very helpful but in Vitest it just fails equality check without giving us any hint at all.

For example, if we have this test that we run in both libs

expect([{ id: 123, name: 'John', age: 30 }])
 .toBe([{ id: 123, name: 'John', age: 30 }]);

in Jest we have this helpful message "serializes to the same string" and also other suggestions

expect(received).toBe(expected) // Object.is equality

    If it should pass with deep equality, replace "toBe" with "toStrictEqual"

    Expected: [{"age": 30, "id": 123, "name": "John"}]
    Received: serializes to the same string

      at Object.<anonymous> (/src/index.spec.ts:34:50)

but in Vitest, it just fails without providing any hint of our problem

 FAIL  src/index.spec.ts > My Test Suite > should have the same array
AssertionError: expected [ { id: 123, name: 'John', age: 30 } ] to be [ { id: 123, name: 'John', age: 30 } ] // Object.is equality
 ❯ src/stores/__tests__/viewStore.spec.ts:63:49
     61|     expect(store.selectedTab).toBe('compId');
     62| 
     63|     expect([{ id: 123, name: 'John', age: 30 }]).toBe([{ id: 123, name: 'John', age: 30 }]);
       |                                                 ^
     64|   });
     65| });

A new developer using Vitest will most certainly be confused and won't know why it failed, then do a search on Google or Stack Overflow. However in Jest, it gives us a great hint of how to modify our code and use the correct check. Half of the time I use the wrong one, so I will very often see this failing... to be or not to be 😄

Suggested solution

Use the same message as Jest which helps user finding the issue with the test. The message that always remind me that I used the wrong check is

Received: serializes to the same string

then I know right away that I must use .toEqual() instead of .toBe()

A very simple message that can so so helpful

Alternative

No response

Additional context

I ran the same test with both libs at latest versions, Jest 28 and Vitest 0.12.4

Validations

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• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that request the same feature to avoid creating a duplicate.

[TommyDew42]

Hi! Can I help with this?

[ghiscoding]

@TommyDew42
I would say yes go ahead, the issue was tagged as "pr welcome" and I don't think anyone started working on it.

[ghiscoding]

closed by #1383