Benchmark: Node.nodeValue vs textNode.data

Script Preparation code:

var node = document.createTextNode(' ');
var i = 10000;

Tests:

Node.nodeValue
while(i){ node.nodeValue = i; i-- }
node.data
while(i){ node.data = i; i-- }

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Node.nodeValue
node.data

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
Node.nodeValue	51831800.0 Ops/sec
node.data	49378128.0 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 provided benchmark and explain what's being tested, compared, and analyzed.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark is designed to compare the performance of two approaches: assigning a value directly to `nodeValue` versus assigning a value to `data`. Both tests create a new text node using the `document.createTextNode()` method and then use a `while` loop to update its value. The goal is to measure which approach is faster.

**Options Compared**

There are two options being compared:

1. **Direct assignment to `nodeValue`**: In this approach, the value is assigned directly to the `nodeValue` property of the text node.
2. **Assignment to `data`**: In this approach, the value is assigned to the `data` property of the text node.

**Pros and Cons**

* Direct assignment to `nodeValue`:
	+ Pros: Typically faster since it doesn't involve a property lookup or modification of an internal buffer.
	+ Cons: Some older browsers may not support or optimize this property, leading to slower performance.
* Assignment to `data`:
	+ Pros: More widely supported across browsers, as it's the primary way to set text content on HTML elements. Modern browsers have optimized their behavior for this property, making it faster.
	+ Cons: May involve a small overhead due to property lookup or internal buffer modifications.

**Library/Features Used**

There is no explicit library mentioned in the provided benchmark definition, but we can infer that:

* `document.createTextNode()` is used to create a new text node, which is a native JavaScript API.
* The `while` loop and assignment statements are standard JavaScript constructs.

**Special JS Features/Syntax**

None of the code snippets explicitly use any special JavaScript features or syntax, such as async/await, Promises, or Arrow functions. However, it's worth noting that modern browsers often optimize for performance by avoiding unnecessary property lookups or modifications, which could be considered a subtle optimization feature.

**Other Alternatives**

If you wanted to modify this benchmark to compare other approaches, here are some alternatives:

* Compare the performance of different ways to update text content on an HTML element, such as:
	+ Directly setting the `innerHTML` property.
	+ Using `textContent`.
	+ Creating a new element with the updated text content.
* Experiment with different text node creation methods or properties, like:
	+ `CDATASection` nodes for special cases like XML literals.
	+ Using `Element.createDocumentFragment()` to create a new fragment.

Keep in mind that each alternative would require modifying the benchmark definition and test code.

Related benchmarks:

Node.nodeValue vs textNode.data (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Node.nodeValue vs node.data

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Node.nodeValue

node.data

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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