Benchmark: _.isEqual vs dequal vs JSON.stringify

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash@4.17.21/lodash.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/dequal@2.0.2/dist/index.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

// 1 level deep
window.foo1 = { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 2 } } };
window.bar1 = { a: 1, b: 3, c: { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 2 } } };

// 2 levels deep
window.foo2 = { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 2 } } };
window.bar2 = { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 3, c: { a: 1, b: 2 } } };

// 3 levels deep
window.foo3 = { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 2 } } };
window.bar3 = { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 2, c: { a: 1, b: 4 } } };

Tests:

Level 1 isEqual
_.isEqual(window.foo1, window.bar1)
Level 1 dequal
dequal.dequal(window.foo1, window.bar1)
Level 1 stringify
JSON.stringify(window.foo1) === JSON.stringify(window.bar1);
Level 2 isEqual
_.isEqual(window.foo2, window.bar2)
Level 2 dequal
dequal.dequal(window.foo2, window.bar2)
Level 2 stringify
JSON.stringify(window.foo2) === JSON.stringify(window.bar2);
Level 3 isEqual
_.isEqual(window.foo3, window.bar3)
Level 3 dequal
dequal.dequal(window.foo3, window.bar3)
Level 3 stringify
JSON.stringify(window.foo3) === JSON.stringify(window.bar3);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Level 1 isEqual
Level 1 dequal
Level 1 stringify
Level 2 isEqual
Level 2 dequal
Level 2 stringify
Level 3 isEqual
Level 3 dequal
Level 3 stringify

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 9 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 135 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Level 1 isEqual	3755401.0 Ops/sec
Level 1 dequal	21424006.0 Ops/sec
Level 1 stringify	3057170.2 Ops/sec
Level 2 isEqual	1787579.5 Ops/sec
Level 2 dequal	9994106.0 Ops/sec
Level 2 stringify	3518258.5 Ops/sec
Level 3 isEqual	1190490.8 Ops/sec
Level 3 dequal	5763307.5 Ops/sec
Level 3 stringify	3511011.2 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 6 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

**Benchmark Overview**

The provided JSON represents a benchmark test for comparing the performance of three JavaScript functions: _.isEqual, dequal, and JSON.stringify. The tests are designed to measure the execution time of these functions on two different objects with varying levels of nesting.

**Options Compared**

The three options being compared are:

1. **_.isEqual**: A function from the Lodash library that compares two values for equality.
2. **dequal**: A custom function implemented by the test, which likely uses a similar approach to _.isEqual but might have some differences in implementation details.
3. **JSON.stringify**: A built-in JavaScript function that converts an object into a JSON string and checks if two strings are equal.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

1. **_.isEqual**:
	* Pros: Widely used, well-tested, and optimized for performance.
	* Cons: Might be slower than custom implementations due to overhead from the Lodash library.
2. **dequal**:
	* Pros: Can be implemented efficiently by the test author, potentially leading to better performance than _.isEqual.
	* Cons: May not be as widely tested or optimized as _.isEqual.
3. **JSON.stringify**:
	* Pros: Extremely fast and lightweight, but only checks for equality of JSON strings.
	* Cons: Not suitable for comparing complex objects, as it ignores non-numeric keys and arrays.

**Performance Implications**

The performance results show that _.isEqual is generally the fastest option across all test cases. This is likely due to its optimized implementation and extensive testing history. However, dequal might provide better performance in specific scenarios where the test author has implemented an efficient algorithm.

JSON.stringify is significantly slower than both _.isEqual and dequal due to its overhead of converting objects to JSON strings and comparing them.

**Conclusion**

The choice of which option to use depends on the specific requirements of your project. If you need a robust, widely tested solution with good performance, _.isEqual might be the best choice. However, if you have control over the implementation and can optimize it for better performance, dequal could be a viable alternative. JSON.stringify is generally only suitable for very simple equality checks on JSON strings.

Related benchmarks:

_.isEqual vs dequal vs JSON.stringify (version: 1)

Test on _.isEqual vs dequal vs JSON.stringify performance

Comparing performance of: Level 1 isEqual vs Level 1 dequal vs Level 1 stringify vs Level 2 isEqual vs Level 2 dequal vs Level 2 stringify vs Level 3 isEqual vs Level 3 dequal vs Level 3 stringify

Created: 3 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

Level 1 isEqual

Level 1 dequal

Level 1 stringify

Level 2 isEqual

Level 2 dequal

Level 2 stringify

Level 3 isEqual

Level 3 dequal

Level 3 stringify

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 6 months ago):