Benchmark: RegExp vs String vs Arrays manipulation for paths

Script Preparation code:

const routes = [{
        path: '/user/1234',
        content: 'User 1234'
    },
    {
        path: '/event/5678/pictures/starred',
        content: 'Event Pictures'
    },
    {
        path: '/events',
        content: 'Events'
    },
];

function routeResolverRegex(path) {
    function normalizePath(p) {
        return p.replace(/\/$/, '')
    }

    path = normalizePath(path)
    const route = routes.find(r => {
        const re = new RegExp('^' + normalizePath(r.path) + '$')
        return re.test(path)
    })

    return route?.content ?? '<div>Not Found</div>'
}

function routeResolverString(path) {
    path = path.endsWith('/') ? path.slice(0, -1) : path;

    const route = routes.find(r => r.path === path);
    return route?.content ?? '<div>Not Found</div>'
}

function routeResolverArray(path) {
    const segments = path.split('/').filter(Boolean);
    const route = routes.find(r => segments.join('/') === r.path);
    return route?.content ?? '<div>Not Found</div>'
}

Tests:

RegExp Implementation
routeResolverRegex('/user/1234');
String Implementation
routeResolverString('/user/1234');
Array Implementation
routeResolverArray('/user/1234');

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
RegExp Implementation
String Implementation
Array Implementation

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 120 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
RegExp Implementation	1817814.1 Ops/sec
String Implementation	17009436.0 Ops/sec
Array Implementation	1722672.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into explaining the benchmark and its various components.

**Benchmark Definition**

The provided JSON represents a benchmark test case for comparing the performance of three different approaches to resolve routes in a route resolver function: regular expressions (RegExp), strings manipulation, and arrays manipulation.

**Options Compared**

1. **Regular Expressions (RegExp)**: The RegExp implementation uses a regular expression to match the input path against each route path. It's likely using the `RegExp.test()` method.
2. **Strings Manipulation**: The string implementation uses a simple string manipulation function that removes trailing slashes and compares the result with each route path.
3. **Arrays Manipulation**: The array implementation splits the input path into segments, filters out empty strings, and joins them back together to form a new string, then compares it with each route path.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

1. **RegExp Implementation**
	* Pros:
		+ Can handle more complex route paths.
		+ Can be more efficient for large datasets.
	* Cons:
		+ May be slower due to the overhead of regular expression creation and execution.
		+ Requires a larger amount of memory for the compiled regular expression.
2. **Strings Manipulation**
	* Pros:
		+ Fast and lightweight.
		+ Easy to implement.
	* Cons:
		+ Limited to simple route paths.
		+ May be slower for large datasets due to string manipulation overhead.
3. **Arrays Manipulation**
	* Pros:
		+ Fast and lightweight.
		+ Easy to implement.
	* Cons:
		+ Requires additional memory for the segment array.
		+ May be slower than RegExp implementation due to array creation and joining overhead.

**Library Used**

In this benchmark, no specific libraries are used beyond the built-in JavaScript `RegExp` class. However, if we were to extend this benchmark to use external libraries, some possible options could include:

* For arrays manipulation: `lodash` or `underscore` for efficient string manipulation.
* For performance optimization: `fast-regex` or `regex-perf` for optimized regular expression creation and execution.

**Special JS Features**

There are no special JavaScript features used in this benchmark beyond the standard features of the languages mentioned above (e.g., arrow functions, template literals).

**Other Alternatives**

For alternative implementations or optimizations, some possible approaches could include:

* Using `path.normalize()` to normalize the route paths and simplify comparisons.
* Caching the compiled regular expression for repeated use.
* Using a more efficient string manipulation algorithm, such as `substring()` instead of `slice()`.
* Parallelizing or multi-threading the benchmark execution using Web Workers or Node.js clusters.

These are just some possible ideas, and the actual implementation details would depend on the specific requirements and performance characteristics of the route resolver function.

Related benchmarks:

RegExp vs String vs Arrays manipulation for paths (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: RegExp Implementation vs String Implementation vs Array Implementation

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

RegExp Implementation

String Implementation

Array Implementation

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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