Benchmark: Intl.Collator.compare vs localeCompare

Script Preparation code:

const minCodePoint = 'a'.charCodeAt(0);
const maxCodePoint = 'z'.charCodeAt(0);
const randomLetter = () => String.fromCharCode(Math.floor(Math.random() * (maxCodePoint - minCodePoint) + minCodePoint));
const createWord = () => Array.from({length: 15}, randomLetter).join('');

var words = Array.from({length: 50000}, createWord);

Tests:

Intl.Collator
const collator = new Intl.Collator(); words.sort(collator.compare);
localeCompare
words.sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b))

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Intl.Collator
localeCompare

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one month ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/145.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 145 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Intl.Collator	143.5 Ops/sec
localeCompare	430.1 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 its pros and cons.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark measures the performance difference between two approaches for comparing strings:

1. `Intl.Collator.compare` (also known as "collator-based" approach)
2. The built-in `localeCompare` method

**What is tested?**

Both approaches are used to sort an array of 50,000 random words using the `sort()` method.

**Options compared**

* **Collator-based approach**: Uses the `Intl.Collator` API to create a collator object, which is then used to compare strings.
	+ Pros: Can handle Unicode characters and cultural nuances more accurately than the locale-based approach. However, it requires JavaScript engine support for the Internationalization API.
	+ Cons: May have higher overhead due to the creation of a new collator object and the need for additional configuration.
* **Locale-based approach**: Uses the `localeCompare` method (built-in) to compare strings.
	+ Pros: Typically faster and more lightweight than the collator-based approach, as it only requires calling a built-in function.
	+ Cons: May not handle Unicode characters or cultural nuances correctly, which can lead to incorrect results or inconsistencies.

**Library**

The `Intl.Collator` API is part of the Internationalization API in JavaScript. It provides a way to compare strings based on their Unicode code points and cultural conventions.

**Special JS feature/syntax**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntax used in this benchmark. Both approaches only rely on standard JavaScript programming constructs.

**Other alternatives**

If you want to test alternative approaches, some options could be:

* Using a library like `string-trie` for faster string matching
* Implementing a custom sorting algorithm, such as radix sort or counting sort, which might have better performance characteristics than the built-in `sort()` method.
* Using a different locale or language configuration with the `localeCompare` method to test its sensitivity to cultural nuances.

Keep in mind that these alternatives would likely change the benchmark's focus and requirements significantly.

Related benchmarks:

Intl.Collator.compare vs localeCompare (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Intl.Collator vs localeCompare

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Intl.Collator

localeCompare

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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