Benchmark: Symbol vs String property square brackettt

Script Preparation code:

var foo = {};
var sym = Symbol("key");
var str = Symbol();

Tests:

Symbol
foo[sym] = 1;
String
foo[str] = 1;

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Symbol
String

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/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

String

196.6M/s

Symbol

194.0M/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ String	196,604,848 Ops/sec
Symbol	194,007,168 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.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark measures the performance difference between using a `Symbol` property (`sym`) versus a regular string property (`str`) when assigning a value to an object (`foo`). The test case is designed to test how fast each approach can execute the assignment operation.

**Script Preparation Code**

The script preparation code creates two variables:

* `foo`: an empty object that will be used as the target for the assignment.
* `sym`: a new `Symbol` property created with the string "key". This symbol is not assigned a value, but rather serves as a property name.
* `str`: another `Symbol` property, which is left unassigned.

**Html Preparation Code**

The HTML preparation code is empty, which means that the test doesn't require any specific HTML environment to run. This suggests that the benchmark focuses on JavaScript engine performance, specifically the execution of assignment operations.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark definition consists of two individual test cases:

1. `foo[sym] = 1;`: Tests assigning a value (1) to the `sym` property.
2. `foo[str] = 1;`: Tests assigning a value (1) to the `str` property.

**Library and Special Features**

In this benchmark, no external libraries are used. However, it's worth noting that both `Symbol` properties are created with the same syntax (`var sym = Symbol("key");` and `var str = Symbol();`), which uses a modern JavaScript feature introduced in ECMAScript 2015 (ES6). The use of symbols is not specific to any particular library, but rather a native JavaScript concept.

**Options Compared**

The two test cases compare the performance difference between:

* Using a `Symbol` property (`sym`) for assignment.
* Using a regular string property (`str`) for assignment.

**Pros and Cons**

Using a `Symbol` property has some advantages over regular string properties:

Pros:

* Symbols are **hashable**, meaning they can be used as keys in hash tables, making them useful for caching or other applications where duplicate values need to be checked.
* Symbols are **unique**, ensuring that each symbol is distinct and cannot be accidentally overwritten.

Cons:

* Symbols are not readable by humans, making them less intuitive to work with for some developers.
* Symbols have been shown to outperform regular string properties in certain scenarios due to their optimized implementation.

On the other hand, regular string properties are simpler to understand and use:

Pros:

* String properties are widely supported across browsers and platforms.
* Strings are readable by humans, making them easier to work with for many developers.

Cons:

* Regular strings can lead to slower performance compared to symbols in some cases, due to the need to create a hash table lookup.

**Other Alternatives**

Other alternatives to using `Symbol` properties could be:

* Using an array index (e.g., `foo[0] = 1;`) or another numeric property.
* Using a different data structure altogether, such as a custom object with a unique identifier.

However, in this specific benchmark, the focus is on comparing the performance of using symbols versus regular string properties.

Symbol vs String property square brackettt (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: `Symbol vs String`

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

Symbol

String

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

Symbol vs String property square brackettt (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Symbol vs String

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

Symbol

String

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 String`