Benchmark: stringify vs join vs tostring

Script Preparation code:

var arr_small = Array.from({ length: 1000 }).map((_, i) => `test_val${i}`);
var arr_big = Array.from({ length: 1000000 }).map((_, i) => `test_val${i}`);

Tests:

stringify
JSON.stringify(arr_small); JSON.stringify(arr_big);
join
arr_small.join(''); arr_big.join('');
toString
arr_small.toString(); arr_big.toString();

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
stringify
join
toString

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 2 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/132.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/132.0.0.0

Browser/OS: Chrome 132 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
stringify	18.9 Ops/sec
join	44.2 Ops/sec
toString	39.3 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided benchmark definition and test cases to understand what is being tested.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark measures the performance of three different methods for converting an array into a string: `JSON.stringify()`, `join()` (without any separator), and `toString()`. The benchmark uses two arrays with varying sizes: `arr_small` with 1000 elements and `arr_big` with 1,000,000 elements.

**Options Compared**

The three options being compared are:

1. **JSON.stringify()**: This method converts an object or array into a JSON string. It's a built-in JavaScript function that can handle arrays.
2. **join() without separator**: The `join()` method concatenates all the strings in an array into one string, using a specified separator (in this case, no separator).
3. **toString()**: This is another built-in JavaScript method that converts an object or array into a string.

**Pros and Cons**

Here's a brief summary of each option:

* **JSON.stringify()**:
	+ Pros: Generally faster for small arrays, handles nested objects/arrays, and provides more control over formatting.
	+ Cons: Can be slower for very large arrays, may cause errors if the array contains non-serializable values, and can produce larger output strings than necessary.
* **join() without separator**:
	+ Pros: Simple to implement, fast for small arrays, and doesn't require special handling of nested structures.
	+ Cons: Can be slow for very large arrays due to the string concatenation overhead, and may cause issues if the array contains non-string elements.
* **toString()**:
	+ Pros: Fastest option, provides a simple way to convert an array into a string without worrying about formatting.
	+ Cons: May not work correctly with nested structures or objects containing non-string properties.

**Library and Special JS Features**

In this benchmark, the `JSON` object is used, which is a built-in JavaScript library that provides methods for working with JSON data. The `map()` function is also used to create the arrays, which is a modern JavaScript feature introduced in ECMAScript 2015 (ES6).

**Benchmark Preparation Code**

The script preparation code creates two arrays using `Array.from()`, which is a convenient method for creating an array from an iterable object. The `map()` function is then used to populate each element of the array with a unique string value.

**Other Alternatives**

If you want to measure the performance of different methods for converting an array into a string, here are some alternative approaches:

* Using `Array.prototype.join()`: Instead of using the `join()` method without any separator, you could try using `Array.prototype.join()` with a separator, like `"-"`.
* Using a custom implementation: You could write your own custom function to convert an array into a string, and then benchmark that against the existing methods.
* Using a different library or framework: Depending on your specific use case, you might be able to find a more efficient library or framework for working with arrays and strings.

Related benchmarks:

stringify vs join vs tostring (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: stringify vs join vs toString

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

stringify

join

toString

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):