Benchmark: Intl.Collator.compare() vs localeCompare()

Script Preparation code:

var a = "FOO BAR";
var b = "foo bar";

var options = {
  sensitivity: 'base'
};

var collator = new Intl.Collator(undefined, options);

Tests:

localeCompare()
a.localeCompare(b, undefined, options) === 0
Intl.Collator.compare()
collator.compare(a, b) === 0

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 189 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 142 runs

Intl.Collator.compare()

8.3M/s

localeCompare()

306K/s

Fastest: Intl.Collator.compare() (27.1x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ Intl.Collator.compare(): 8,287,499 ops/sec
• localeCompare(): 305,808 ops/sec

Firefox 33 runs

Intl.Collator.compare()

14.3M/s

localeCompare()

353K/s

Fastest: Intl.Collator.compare() (40.4x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ Intl.Collator.compare(): 14,251,119 ops/sec
• localeCompare(): 352,545 ops/sec

Safari 9 runs

Intl.Collator.compare()

7.6M/s

localeCompare()

204K/s

Fastest: Intl.Collator.compare() (37.3x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ Intl.Collator.compare(): 7,601,384 ops/sec
• localeCompare(): 203,664 ops/sec

Mobile Results:

Safari 5 runs

Intl.Collator.compare()

5.8M/s

localeCompare()

215K/s

Fastest: Intl.Collator.compare() (27.0x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ Intl.Collator.compare(): 5,803,066 ops/sec
• localeCompare(): 214,679 ops/sec

Results show median performance across all community submissions. Run this benchmark yourself to verify on your device.

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
localeCompare()
Intl.Collator.compare()

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/149.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 149 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Intl.Collator.compare()

26.7M/s

localeCompare()

798K/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ Intl.Collator.compare()	26,696,784 Ops/sec
localeCompare()	798,491 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the benchmark and its options.

**What is being tested?**

The test compares two string comparison methods in JavaScript: `Intl.Collator.compare()` and `localeCompare()`. Specifically, it tests how these methods handle case sensitivity in strings. The strings "FOO BAR" and "foo bar" are used as input to demonstrate the difference between the two methods.

**Options compared**

Two options are compared:

1. **sensitivity**: This option determines how the collator compares characters. It can be set to:
	* `'base'`: This is the default setting, which means that the comparison is case-sensitive.
	* `'variant'`: This setting makes the comparison case-insensitive.
2. The `Intl.Collator` constructor's second argument (the locale). In this benchmark, it is set to `undefined`, which means that the locale is not specified. This allows the browser to choose a default locale.

**Pros and cons of each approach**

1. **Intl.Collator.compare() with sensitivity = 'base'**:
	* Pros: Preserves case distinction in strings.
	* Cons: May lead to inconsistent results across different browsers or locales.
2. **Intl.Collator.compare() with sensitivity = 'variant'**:
	* Pros: Provides consistent results, even across different browsers and locales.
	* Cons: Ignores case differences in strings, which might not be desirable for all use cases.

3. **localeCompare()**:
	* Pros: Provides a standard way to compare strings in a locale-agnostic manner.
	* Cons: May not preserve the original case distinction of the input strings.

4. Using `undefined` as the locale argument:
	* Pros: Allows browsers to choose a default locale, which can lead to more consistent results.
	* Cons: May use a different locale than intended by the developer, leading to unexpected behavior.

**Library and its purpose**

The `Intl.Collator` API is part of the JavaScript standard library (ECMAScript Internationalization APIs). It provides a way to compare strings in a locale-aware manner, taking into account factors like case sensitivity, accent marking, and script-specific rules. In this benchmark, it's used to test the behavior of `compare()` with different settings.

**Special JS feature or syntax**

There is no special JavaScript feature or syntax mentioned in this benchmark. However, some readers might be familiar with the `Intl` namespace, which provides internationalization APIs for working with Unicode characters and locale-specific formatting.

**Other alternatives**

If you want to implement your own string comparison function without using the `Intl.Collator` API, you could consider using a library like `punycode` or `normalize.js`, which provide functions for normalizing and comparing strings in different ways. Alternatively, you could write your own custom implementation of a collator-like algorithm.

Keep in mind that these alternatives may not offer the same level of consistency and accuracy as the `Intl.Collator` API, especially when dealing with complex cases like accent marking or script-specific rules.

Intl.Collator.compare() vs localeCompare() (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: `localeCompare() vs Intl.Collator.compare()`

Created: 5 years ago by: Registered User

Go to the latest result

localeCompare()

Intl.Collator.compare()

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 189 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 142 runs

Firefox 33 runs

Safari 9 runs

Mobile Results:

Safari 5 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

Intl.Collator.compare() vs localeCompare() (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: localeCompare() vs Intl.Collator.compare()

Created: 5 years ago by: Registered User

Go to the latest result

localeCompare()

Intl.Collator.compare()

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 189 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 142 runs

Firefox 33 runs

Safari 9 runs

Mobile Results:

Safari 5 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

Related benchmarks

Comparing performance of: `localeCompare() vs Intl.Collator.compare()`