Comparison of class with recursive references causes fatal error

Hi All I am coming up against a similar issue as http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=31449 Take the following code for example (from the bug report) <?php

    class Recursive {
        private $me;

        function __construct() {
            $this->me = $this;
        }
    }

    new Recursive() != new Recursive();

?> A "nesting level too deep" fatal error is thrown... I can kind of see why this happens... The bug report is closed as bogus with the following statement "I don't think it's a bug. You can not compare these objects since they contain circular references, so comparison process descends to the endless loop. You may want to use custom method to compare objects - bit-comparison of objects is generally not the best idea." the question is how to solve this... I couldnt see any immediate way to comare 2 objects easily.. Some idea's I came up with... 1. Serialize the 2 objects and then compare the serialized data. 2. Compare the 2 classes using get_class_methods() and get_class_vars() Is there an easier way? Or has anyone got any better suggestions that I can use? Note: the above code is for PHP 5.. I am using PHP 4 and come up against a similar issue when using mock objects to unit test an observer pattern. Regards Mark