Benchmark: For vs recursion

Tests:

Recursion
function printNumber(n) { if (n < 0) return; console.log(n); printNumber(n - 1); } printNumber(10);
For loop
function printNumber(n) { for (let i = n; i >= 0; i--) { console.log(i); } } printNumber(10);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Recursion
For loop

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 7 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/140.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 140 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Recursion	64182.9 Ops/sec
For loop	57558.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

I'd be happy to explain what's being tested in this benchmark.

**Benchmark Overview**

The provided JSON represents two microbenchmarks that compare the performance of iterative and recursive approaches for printing numbers from 10 down to 0.

**Test Cases**

There are two test cases:

1. **For loop**: The `printNumber` function uses a traditional `for` loop to iterate from 10 down to 0, logging each number to the console.
2. **Recursion**: The same `printNumber` function is defined recursively, calling itself with decreasing values of `n` until it reaches 0.

**Options Compared**

The benchmark compares two approaches:

* **Iterative (For loop)**: Using a traditional `for` loop to iterate over the range of numbers.
* **Recursive**: Using recursive function calls to decrease the value of `n`.

**Pros and Cons**

Here's a brief summary of the pros and cons of each approach:

* **Iterative (For loop)**
	+ Pros:
		- Typically faster and more efficient, especially for large ranges.
		- Less memory overhead since only the current iteration is stored in memory.
	+ Cons:
		- May be less intuitive or easier to understand, especially for beginners.
* **Recursive**
	+ Pros:
		- Can be more intuitive or easier to understand for some developers (although not recommended for large ranges).
		- Can be more suitable for problems that have a natural recursive structure.
	+ Cons:
		- Typically slower and less efficient due to the overhead of function calls.
		- May consume more memory since each recursive call creates a new stack frame.

**Library and Special JS Features**

Neither of these test cases uses any libraries or special JavaScript features beyond the standard `console.log` function. The focus is solely on comparing the performance of two different programming approaches.

**Other Alternatives**

There are several other alternatives to these two approaches:

* **Using a generator**: Another iterative approach that uses generators instead of traditional loops.
* **Using array methods**: Using methods like `forEach`, `map`, or `reduce` to iterate over an array of numbers.
* **Using async/await**: Using asynchronous functions with `async/await` syntax to achieve the same result.

**Conclusion**

The benchmark provides a simple and straightforward way to compare the performance of iterative and recursive approaches for printing numbers from 10 down to 0. By analyzing the results, developers can gain insights into the trade-offs between these two approaches and make informed decisions about which one to use in their own codebase.

Related benchmarks:

For vs recursion (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Recursion vs For loop

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Recursion

For loop

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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