Right, I was suggesting something like this (since we're already in JSON land, why leave it for string land):

    let obj = { id: 1 }

    for (let id = 2; id <= 10; id++) {
      obj = { id, previous: obj }
    }

The problem as stated is more complicated than it needs to be, due to forcing the serialized structure to match the in memory structure. Their in memory structure is a singly linked list. With JSON as a serialization format, that’s probably better modeled as an array with the “previous” link stored as the head (history[0]), and its “previous” stored as the tail (history[1]).

If this sounds like a cons cell, that’s what it is! It’s also a linked list. The laziness they want to achieve (only de/serialize one screen at a time per navigation forward or back) is also straightforward.

- forward: serialize the current screen, trim the leading/trailing quote off the previous serialization, insert with a comma before the new trailing bracket

- back: parse history, head is your desired “previous” screen, tail is your now-“previous” screen’s history

There’s a tiny amount of overhead to this approach, but not nearly as much as repeatedly reserializing the same string to shoehorn it into a serialized structure that doesn’t let you cheat a little bit with well known start/end characters.