Benchmark: string indexer or charAt

Script Preparation code:

s = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxzy'

Tests:

array access
r = '' for (let i = 0, l = s.length; i < l; ++i) { r += s[i] }
charAt
r = '' for (let i = 0, l = s.length; i < l; ++i) { r += s.charAt(i) }

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 7 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 7 runs

array access

431K/s

charAt

430K/s

View exact numbers

✓ array access: 430,587 ops/sec
• charAt: 429,786 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
array access
charAt

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 23 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/151.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 151 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

array access

431K/s

charAt

429K/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ array access	430,587 Ops/sec
charAt	429,123 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 explain what's being tested.

**What is being tested?**

The test case compares two ways to access individual characters in a string: using `array access` (also known as indexing) versus using the `charAt()` method.

**Options compared**

There are two options being compared:

1. **Array Access**: This involves accessing the `i-th` character of the string `s` directly using `s[i]`.
2. **charAt() Method**: This involves calling the `charAt()` method on the string object, passing the index `i` as an argument.

**Pros and Cons**

Here are some pros and cons of each approach:

* **Array Access**:
	+ Pros: typically faster and more efficient, as it avoids the overhead of a function call.
	+ Cons: may require manual indexing, which can be error-prone if not done correctly.
* **charAt() Method**:
	+ Pros: safer and easier to use, as it's a well-defined method that follows standard JavaScript conventions.
	+ Cons: may be slower than direct array access due to the overhead of the function call.

**Library used**

In this test case, no specific library is mentioned. However, note that `charAt()` is a built-in method in JavaScript, so it doesn't require any additional imports or libraries.

**Special JS feature or syntax**

There are no special features or syntaxes being tested here. The code uses standard JavaScript syntax and does not rely on any advanced features like async/await, generators, or decorators.

**Other alternatives**

If you wanted to test this benchmark with alternative approaches, some options might include:

* Using a regular expression to extract the character
* Converting the string to an array and using indexing (e.g., `s[i]`)
* Using a different string manipulation method, such as using `substring()` or `slice()`

However, these alternatives are not tested in this specific benchmark.

**Benchmark preparation code**

The script preparation code is:
```javascript
s = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxzy';
```
This creates a string `s` containing all 26 lowercase English letters. The HTML preparation code is empty (`null`), suggesting that no additional HTML elements or setup are required for this benchmark.

string indexer or charAt (version: 0) Benchmark.js

Is array access to a string faster than calling charAt?

Comparing performance of: `array access vs charAt`

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

array access

charAt

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 7 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 7 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 indexer or charAt (version: 0) Benchmark.js

Is array access to a string faster than calling charAt?

Comparing performance of: array access vs charAt

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

array access

charAt

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 7 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 7 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

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Comparing performance of: `array access vs charAt`