Benchmark: eval vs new Function

Script Preparation code:

var func = new Function("return 2 * 3");

Tests:

eval
eval("2 * 3");
new Function
func();

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
eval
new Function

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 7 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/141.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 141 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
eval	36264216.0 Ops/sec
new Function	268110016.0 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.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark is comparing two approaches: using `eval()` and creating a new function with `new Function()`. The script preparation code for the first approach is:
```javascript
var func = new Function("return 2 * 3");
```
This creates a new function that takes no arguments and returns the result of evaluating "2 * 3".

**Script Preparation Code**

The script preparation code for the second approach is simply:
```javascript
eval("2 * 3");
```
This uses the built-in `eval()` function to evaluate the expression.

**What's being tested?**

The benchmark is measuring the performance difference between these two approaches. Specifically, it's testing:

* How long it takes to execute each function (in terms of CPU cycles or time)
* Which approach has a faster execution rate per second

**Options compared**

There are only two options being compared in this benchmark: `eval()` and `new Function()`. Both approaches evaluate the expression "2 * 3", but they do so in different ways.

**Pros and Cons of each approach**

* **`eval()`**:
	+ Pros:
		- Simple to use
		- Can be used for arbitrary expressions
	+ Cons:
		- Can execute arbitrary code, making it a security risk if not used carefully
		- Can be slower due to the overhead of parsing and executing the expression
* **`new Function()`**:
	+ Pros:
		- More controlled execution environment (can't execute arbitrary code)
		- May be faster due to the ability to optimize the generated function
	+ Cons:
		- Requires more code and setup compared to `eval()`

**Library used**

There is no explicit library being used in this benchmark. However, it's worth noting that some browsers may have additional optimizations or features that affect the performance of these functions.

**Special JS feature or syntax**

Neither of the approaches uses any special JavaScript features or syntax beyond basic arithmetic expressions.

**Other alternatives**

If you wanted to add more options to the benchmark, you could consider adding other ways to evaluate expressions, such as:

* Using a library like `escodegen` or `recast` to generate and optimize the expression
* Comparing the performance of different JavaScript engines (e.g., V8 vs SpiderMonkey)
* Evaluating expressions in different contexts (e.g., with and without sandboxing)

Keep in mind that adding new options would require additional benchmark preparation code, test cases, and results analysis.

I hope this explanation helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.

Related benchmarks:

eval vs new Function (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: eval vs new Function

Created: 8 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

eval

new Function

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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