Benchmark: math.max.apply vs math.max(...)

Tests:

apply
const array = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]; Math.max.apply(null, array);
spread
const array = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]; Math.max(...array);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
apply
spread

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/130.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 130 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
apply	8350489.0 Ops/sec
spread	8122875.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gemma2:9b, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

This benchmark compares two ways to find the maximum value in an array using JavaScript: `Math.max.apply(null, array)` and `Math.max(...array)`.

**Options Compared:**

* **`Math.max.apply(null, array)`:** This method uses the `apply` function to call `Math.max` with the array as an argument list.  The `null` passed as the first argument indicates that we don't want to use a specific object's context for the function call.

* **`Math.max(...array)`:** This method utilizes the spread operator (`...`) to expand the array into individual arguments when calling `Math.max`.

**Pros and Cons:**

* **`apply`:**
    * **Pro:**  Can be more familiar to developers who learned JavaScript before the widespread adoption of modern syntax like the spread operator.
    * **Con:** Can be considered slightly less readable compared to the spread operator approach for this specific use case.

* **`spread`:**
    * **Pro:** Cleaner and more concise syntax, often preferred for readability. Directly mirrors the intent of passing elements from an array as arguments.
    * **Con:** Requires familiarity with modern JavaScript syntax (ES6+).

**Other Considerations:**

*  **Performance:** In this particular case, both methods are likely to perform similarly due to JavaScript's efficient handling of array operations and built-in functions like `Math.max`. The benchmark results you provided might show minor variations, but those could be attributed to browser optimizations or other environmental factors rather than a fundamental difference in the approaches.

**Alternatives:**

* **`Array.prototype.reduce()`:** You could use the reduce method to find the maximum value iteratively within the array: 
   ```javascript
   const max = array.reduce((maxVal, current) => (current > maxVal ? current : maxVal), array[0]); 
   ```

* **`Array.prototype.sort()`:** Although not as direct, you could sort the array and take the last element:
    ```javascript
    const sortedArray = array.sort((a, b) => a - b);
    const max = sortedArray[sortedArray.length - 1];
    ```

Let me know if you have any other questions or would like to explore specific benchmark results in more detail!

Related benchmarks:

math.max.apply vs math.max(...) (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: apply vs spread

Created: 5 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

apply

spread

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gemma2:9b, generated one year ago):