Benchmark: lodash head vs 0

HTML Preparation code:

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

Script Preparation code:

var x = [10, 20, 30, 100];
var y = [];

Tests:

Access to not empty first value of array by using lodash head function
_.head(x);
Access to not empty first value of array by using JS syntax x[0]
x[0]

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Access to not empty first value of array by using lodash head function
Access to not empty first value of array by using JS syntax x[0]

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/130.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 130 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Access to not empty first value of array by using lodash head function	10750162.0 Ops/sec
Access to not empty first value of array by using JS syntax x[0]	20584838.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

This benchmark on MeasureThat.net compares two ways to access the first element of an array in JavaScript:

**Option 1:** Using Lodash's `_.head(x)` function.

**Option 2:** Using native JavaScript syntax `x[0]`.

Here's a breakdown:

* **Lodash**: It's a popular JavaScript library offering utility functions for working with arrays, objects, and strings. In this case, `_.head(array)` is used to get the first element of an array.  While convenient, it adds a dependency on an external library.
* **Native Syntax**: This approach directly accesses the first element using array indexing (`x[0]`). It's built into JavaScript and doesn't require any additional libraries.

**Pros and Cons:**

| Approach         | Pros                                  | Cons                                 |
|------------------|----------------------------------------|---------------------------------------|
| Lodash `_.head(x)` | * Concise syntax                    * Well-tested, established library   | * Adds external dependency            * Potential performance overhead compared to native syntax |
| Native Syntax `x[0]`| * No external dependencies           * Potentially faster execution        | * Less concise syntax                 |

**Considerations:**

* **Performance**: The benchmark results on MeasureThat.net demonstrate that the native syntax (`x[0]`) is significantly faster in this particular case.  This isn't always the case, as Lodash might be optimized for other operations.
* **Readability**: While subjective, some developers find `_.head(x)` more readable than `x[0]` when explicitly working with array heads.

**Alternatives:**

While `_.head` and `x[0]` are common approaches, there are other possibilities:

* **Spread Operator (`...`)**: For iterating over arrays or extracting elements, the spread operator can be elegant.
* **Array.shift()**: If you need to remove the first element from the array while also accessing it, `array.shift()` is useful.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Related benchmarks:

lodash head vs 0 (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Access to not empty first value of array by using lodash head function vs Access to not empty first value of array by using JS syntax x[0]

Created: 4 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

Access to not empty first value of array by using lodash head function

Access to not empty first value of array by using JS syntax x[0]

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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