Benchmark: toString vs Stringify vs backticks

Script Preparation code:

function moreData(arr, left) {
  if(left === 0) return arr;
  else {
    arr.push(Math.floor(Math.random() * 256));
  	return moreData(arr, left - 1);
  }
}
function makeTestData() { return moreData([], 4); }

Tests:

toString
makeTestData().toString()
stringify
JSON.stringify(makeTestData());
backticks
`${Object.values(makeTestData())}`

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
toString
stringify
backticks

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one year ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:138.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/138.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 138 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
toString	5185932.0 Ops/sec
stringify	1397657.9 Ops/sec
backticks	1080830.2 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into the explanation of the provided benchmark.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark measures the performance of three different approaches to convert an array to a string:

1. `toString()`
2. `JSON.stringify()`
3. `backticks` (template literals)

These approaches are compared to determine which one is the fastest and most efficient.

**Options Compared**

Here's a brief overview of each approach and its pros and cons:

1. **`toString()`**: This method converts an array to a string by concatenating all its elements. However, it has some limitations:
	* It can be slow for large arrays because of the overhead of concatenation.
	* It may not produce predictable or consistent output, depending on the browser's implementation.
2. **`JSON.stringify()`**: This method converts an array to a string by serializing it into a JSON format. However:
	* It can add unnecessary complexity and overhead due to the parsing process.
	* It may not be suitable for all types of arrays (e.g., sparse arrays).
3. **`backticks` (template literals)**: This approach uses template literals with the `Object.values()` method to convert an array to a string:
	* It is often faster than `toString()` because it avoids concatenation.
	* It produces predictable and consistent output, regardless of the browser's implementation.

**Library Used**

None, as this benchmark only uses built-in JavaScript features and methods.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

The `Object.values()` method is used to extract an array of values from an object. This feature is part of ECMAScript 2017 (ES7) syntax.

**Benchmark Preparation Code**

The preparation code generates a test data array by recursively adding random numbers to it:
```javascript
function moreData(arr, left) {
  if (left === 0) return arr;
  else {
    arr.push(Math.floor(Math.random() * 256));
    return moreData(arr, left - 1);
  }
}

function makeTestData() { return moreData([], 4); }
```
This code creates an array with a specific number of elements and random values.

**Individual Test Cases**

The benchmark consists of three test cases:

1. `toString()`: converts the generated array to a string using the `toString()` method.
2. `JSON.stringify()`: converts the generated array to a string using `JSON.stringify()`.
3. `backticks`: converts the generated array to a string using template literals with `Object.values()`.

**Latest Benchmark Result**

The latest benchmark result shows the performance metrics for each test case:

| Test Name | Executions Per Second |
| --- | --- |
| `toString()` | 1252395.875 |
| `stringify` | 1211296.0 |
| `backticks` | 1074854.5 |

The results indicate that `backticks` is the fastest approach, followed by `JSON.stringify()`, and then `toString()`.

Related benchmarks:

toString vs Stringify vs backticks (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: toString vs stringify vs backticks

Created: 5 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

toString

stringify

backticks

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):