Benchmark: RegEx.test vs. String.includes vs. String.startsWith

Script Preparation code:

var string = "Hello world!";
var regex = /Hello/;

function startsWithJitGen(sequence) {
  const chain = []

  chain.push('(typeof value === \'string\')')
  chain.push(`(value.length >= ${sequence.length})`)

  for (let i = 0, il = sequence.length; i < il; ++i) {
    chain.push(`(value[${i}] === '${sequence[i]}')`)
  }

  const fnBody = 'return ' + chain.join(' && ')
  return new Function('value', fnBody)
}

var startsWithJIT = startsWithJitGen('Hello')

Tests:

regex.test
regex.test(string);
string.includes
string.includes("Hello");
string.startsWith
string.startsWith("Hello");
startsWithJIT
startsWithJIT(string)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
regex.test
string.includes
string.startsWith
startsWithJIT

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 120 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
regex.test	12212591.0 Ops/sec
string.includes	30936690.0 Ops/sec
string.startsWith	24669022.0 Ops/sec
startsWithJIT	14318257.0 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 benchmark and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark is designed to compare the performance of three different approaches:

1. `string.includes`: checks if a specified substring is present in a string
2. `string.startsWith`: checks if a string starts with a specified prefix
3. `startsWithJIT`: a custom, just-in-time (JIT) compiled version of the `startsWith` function

**Options Compared**

The benchmark is comparing the performance of these three approaches under different conditions:

* The input strings are identical (`"Hello world!"`)
* The regular expression pattern for `regex.test` is `/Hello/`, which matches any occurrence of "Hello" anywhere in the string
* `startsWithJIT` uses a custom, generated implementation to compile the `startsWith` function at runtime

**Pros and Cons**

Here's a brief summary of the pros and cons of each approach:

1. `string.includes`:
	* Pros: widely supported, easy to implement
	* Cons: may be slower for larger strings or specific use cases (e.g., exact matching)
2. `string.startsWith`:
	* Pros: faster than `includes` for shorter strings, can be optimized with caching
	* Cons: limited to checking if the string starts with a prefix, not suitable for general substring matching
3. `startsWithJIT`:
	* Pros: potentially much faster than native implementations due to JIT compilation
	* Cons: requires custom implementation and setup, may not work well for all use cases or edge cases

**Library and Custom Implementation**

The custom implementation (`startsWithJIT`) uses a library called V8's `Function constructor` to generate and execute the compiled function at runtime. The library is part of the Chrome browser's JavaScript engine.

**Special JS Features and Syntax**

There are no special JS features or syntax used in this benchmark, as it relies solely on standard JavaScript constructs (strings, loops, conditionals).

**Other Alternatives**

If you're looking for alternatives to these approaches, consider:

* Using `substr` or `indexOf` methods instead of `includes`
* Implementing a custom, optimized substring search algorithm using techniques like Knuth-Morris-Pratt (KMP) or Boyer-Moore
* Utilizing WebAssembly (WASM) modules or native code interfaces for performance-critical code

Keep in mind that the best approach depends on the specific use case and requirements.

Related benchmarks:

RegEx.test vs. String.includes vs. String.startsWith (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: regex.test vs string.includes vs string.startsWith vs startsWithJIT

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

regex.test

string.includes

string.startsWith

startsWithJIT

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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