Benchmark: json stringify vs array tostring when long array

Script Preparation code:

function moreData(arr, left) {
  if(left === 0) return arr;
  else {
    arr.push(Math.floor(Math.random() * 256));
  	return moreData(arr, left - 1);
  }
}
function makeTestData() { return moreData([], 5000); }

Tests:

toString
makeTestData().toString()
JSON.stringify
JSON.stringify(makeTestData());

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 5 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 5 runs

JSON.stringify

12K/s

toString

9K/s

Fastest: JSON.stringify (1.3x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ JSON.stringify: 11,806 ops/sec
• toString: 8,846 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
toString
JSON.stringify

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 3 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.4 Safari/605.1.15

Browser/OS: Safari 26 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

toString

14K/s

JSON.stringify

14K/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ toString	14,481 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify	13,797 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 definition and test cases to understand what is being tested, compared, and their pros and cons.

**Benchmark Definition:**

The benchmark definition uses two functions:

1. `makeTestData()`: This function generates an array of 5000 random integers using recursion and push operation. The purpose of this function seems to be creating a large dataset for testing.
2. Two stringification functions:
	* `toString()`: Simply converts the generated array to a string using the built-in `toString()` method.
	* `JSON.stringify()`: Converts the generated array to a JSON string using the `JSON.stringify()` function.

**Test Cases:**

The benchmark definition consists of two test cases:

1. `toString`: Measures the execution time of converting the generated array to a string using the built-in `toString()` method.
2. `JSON.stringify`: Measures the execution time of converting the generated array to a JSON string using the `JSON.stringify()` function.

**Comparison:**

The benchmark is comparing the performance of two different approaches:

1. Built-in `toString()` method
2. `JSON.stringify()` function

**Pros and Cons:**

**Built-in `toString()` method:**

Pros:

* Lightweight and efficient, as it's a built-in function.
* Should be faster than JSON serialization.

Cons:

* May not provide the desired format or structure for the resulting string (e.g., formatting, escaping).
* May not handle complex data types well (e.g., objects, arrays with nested structures).

**JSON.stringify() function:**

Pros:

* Provides a standardized and widely supported format for serializing JSON data.
* Can handle complex data types, such as objects and arrays with nested structures.

Cons:

* May be slower than the built-in `toString()` method due to additional overhead from formatting and escaping.
* Requires an external library (in this case, built into the browser) to work correctly.

**Library:**

The `JSON.stringify()` function is part of the ECMAScript standard, but its implementation may vary between browsers. In this benchmark, it's likely that Chrome 113 is using a specific implementation.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax:**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntax used in this benchmark definition. It only relies on built-in functions and standard library calls.

**Alternatives:**

If you want to explore alternative approaches, consider the following:

1. Use a custom stringification function that provides more control over formatting and escaping.
2. Utilize libraries like `lodash` or `xml-js` for JSON serialization, which may offer better performance and features.
3. Investigate other data formats, such as binary serialization (e.g., `Buffer`) or XML serialization.

Keep in mind that the choice of approach depends on your specific requirements, such as formatting needs, data complexity, and performance concerns.

json stringify vs array tostring when long array (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: `toString vs JSON.stringify`

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

toString

JSON.stringify

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 5 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 5 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

json stringify vs array tostring when long array (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: toString vs JSON.stringify

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

toString

JSON.stringify

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 5 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 5 runs

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: `toString vs JSON.stringify`