Benchmark: string vs number vs symbol

Tests:

Symbol
const a = Symbol(); const b = Symbol(); a === b
Number
const a = 1; const b = 2; a === b
String
const a = '1'; const b = '2'; a === b

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 42 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 32 runs

String

157.6M/s

Number

153.2M/s

Symbol

22.6M/s

Fastest: String (7.0x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ String: 157,590,560 ops/sec
• Number: 153,182,784 ops/sec
• Symbol: 22,565,316 ops/sec

Firefox 10 runs

String

1333.1M/s

Number

1310.1M/s

Symbol

13.4M/s

Fastest: String (99.4x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ String: 1,333,072,896 ops/sec
• Number: 1,310,110,976 ops/sec
• Symbol: 13,415,491 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
Symbol
Number
String

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 10 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/140.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 140 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

String

189.6M/s

Number

179.2M/s

Symbol

33.0M/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ String	189,619,152 Ops/sec
Number	179,178,176 Ops/sec
Symbol	33,009,098 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 results.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark is designed to compare the performance of JavaScript primitives: numbers, strings, and symbols. The test cases check for equality between two variables, where one variable is initialized with a specific type (number, string, or symbol) and the other variable is initialized with a value that should not match the first variable.

**Benchmark Test Cases**

There are three test cases:

1. **Symbol**: Checks if `a === b` when both `a` and `b` are assigned the same symbol using `const a = Symbol(); const b = Symbol();`.
2. **Number**: Checks if `a === b` when both `a` and `b` are assigned numbers `1` and `2`, respectively.
3. **String**: Checks if `a === b` when both `a` and `b` are assigned strings `'1'` and `'2'`, respectively.

**Library and Special JS Features**

In this benchmark, there is no explicit library used. However, the use of symbols (`const a = Symbol(); const b = Symbol();`) introduces a special JavaScript feature: primitive values (numbers, strings, symbols) are distinct and can be compared using `===` or other comparison operators.

**Performance Comparison**

The results show that:

* **Symbol**: Symbols have the highest execution rate, with an average of 6652672 executions per second.
* **Number**: Numbers have a lower execution rate than symbols but higher than strings. The average execution rate is around 171858736 executions per second.
* **String**: Strings have the lowest execution rate, with an average of 171858736 executions per second.

**Pros and Cons**

* **Symbols**:
	+ Pros: High performance due to their primitive nature and immutability.
	+ Cons: Limited use cases, as they are not commonly used in JavaScript programming.
* **Numbers**:
	+ Pros: Fast execution rates, widely used in numerical computations.
	+ Cons: Comparison operators like `===` may return false positives for some numeric values (e.g., NaN).
* **Strings**:
	+ Pros: Common use case, easy to work with, and has many built-in methods.
	+ Cons: Lower performance compared to numbers and symbols.

**Other Alternatives**

If this benchmark were not available, one could consider using other approaches:

1. **Use existing benchmarking libraries**: e.g., Benchmark.js or Microbenchmark.
2. **Implement custom benchmarking loops**: using JavaScript's built-in `performance.now()` function to measure execution times.
3. **Compare performance on different platforms**: to account for differences in browser behavior.

Keep in mind that this is a simplified explanation, and there are many factors that can affect performance in real-world applications.

string vs number vs symbol (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: `Symbol vs Number vs String`

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

Symbol

Number

String

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 42 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 32 runs

Firefox 10 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

string vs number vs symbol (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Symbol vs Number vs String

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

Symbol

Number

String

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 42 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 32 runs

Firefox 10 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: `Symbol vs Number vs String`