Fastest way to flatten / un-flatten nested JavaScript objects

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Here’s my much shorter implementation:

Object.unflatten = function(data) {
    "use strict";
    if (Object(data) !== data || Array.isArray(data))
        return data;
    var regex = /\.?([^.\[\]]+)|\[(\d+)\]/g,
        resultholder = {};
    for (var p in data) {
        var cur = resultholder,
            prop = "",
            m;
        while (m = regex.exec(p)) {
            cur = cur[prop] || (cur[prop] = (m[2] ? [] : {}));
            prop = m[2] || m[1];
        }
        cur[prop] = data[p];
    }
    return resultholder[""] || resultholder;
};

flatten hasn’t changed much (and I’m not sure whether you really need those isEmpty cases):

Object.flatten = function(data) {
    var result = {};
    function recurse (cur, prop) {
        if (Object(cur) !== cur) {
            result[prop] = cur;
        } else if (Array.isArray(cur)) {
             for(var i=0, l=cur.length; i<l; i++)
                 recurse(cur[i], prop + "[" + i + "]");
            if (l == 0)
                result[prop] = [];
        } else {
            var isEmpty = true;
            for (var p in cur) {
                isEmpty = false;
                recurse(cur[p], prop ? prop+"."+p : p);
            }
            if (isEmpty && prop)
                result[prop] = {};
        }
    }
    recurse(data, "");
    return result;
}

Together, they run your benchmark in about the half of the time (Opera 12.16: ~900ms instead of ~ 1900ms, Chrome 29: ~800ms instead of ~1600ms).

Note: This and most other solutions answered here focus on speed and are susceptible to prototype pollution and shold not be used on untrusted objects.

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