Benchmark: Stringify vs toString vs array stringify

Script Preparation code:

window.values = [2, '2', true, [2], []]

Tests:

JSON.stringify
window.values.forEach(v => JSON.stringify(v))
toString
window.values.forEach(v => Array.isArray(v) ? JSON.stringify(v) : v.toString())
Stringify whole array
JSON.stringify(window.values)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
JSON.stringify
toString
Stringify whole array

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 16_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Browser/OS: Mobile Safari 16 on iOS 16.1.1

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
JSON.stringify	1088495.2 Ops/sec
toString	956631.8 Ops/sec
Stringify whole array	3131844.8 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

**Benchmark Explanation**

MeasureThat.net is a website that allows users to create and run JavaScript microbenchmarks. The provided benchmark tests three different approaches for stringifying (converting) values in an array: `JSON.stringify`, `toString` (when the value is not a primitive), and stringifying the entire array at once.

**Options Compared**

The benchmark compares the performance of these three approaches:

1. **JSON.stringify**: This method converts all values in the array to their string representation.
2. **toString**: When the value is not a primitive (e.g., an object or an array), this method calls the `toString` method on it, which may return a different string representation.
3. **Stringify whole array**: In this approach, the entire array is passed as a single argument to `JSON.stringify`, which converts each element in the array to its string representation.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

1. **JSON.stringify**:
	* Pros: Simple and efficient for primitive values.
	* Cons: May not work well with non-primitive values, such as objects or arrays, as it can lead to complex string representations.
2. **toString**:
	* Pros: Can handle non-primitive values by calling `toString` on them.
	* Cons: May not produce consistent string representations for different types of values.
3. **Stringify whole array**:
	* Pros: Efficiently handles arrays with non-primitive elements, as `JSON.stringify` only converts each element to its string representation.
	* Cons: Can be slower than the other two approaches for large arrays due to the overhead of calling `JSON.stringify` on each element.

**Library Used**

None explicitly mentioned in the provided benchmark definition. However, `JSON.stringify` is a built-in JavaScript method that is part of the ECMAScript standard.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

None explicitly used or mentioned in this benchmark.

**Alternative Approaches**

Other alternatives for stringifying values in JavaScript include:

1. **String.prototype.join()**: This method can be used to concatenate all elements in an array into a single string.
2. **Array.prototype.map() + Array.prototype.join()**: This approach uses `map()` to create a new array with the string representation of each element and then joins these strings together using `join()`.

These alternatives may offer different trade-offs in terms of performance, code readability, and handling non-primitive values.

Related benchmarks:

Stringify vs toString vs array stringify (version: 2)

JSON stringify versus object's toString method if we have to check for non primitives

Comparing performance of: JSON.stringify vs toString vs Stringify whole array

Created: 2 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

JSON.stringify

toString

Stringify whole array

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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