Benchmark: Array comparison: JSON.stringify vs react-fast-compare vs _.isEqual

HTML Preparation code:

<script src='https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/react-fast-compare@3.2.0/index.min.js'></script>
<script src='https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.5/lodash.min.js'></script>

Script Preparation code:

window.a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

window.b = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

Tests:

JSON.stringify
JSON.stringify(window.a) === JSON.stringify(window.b);
react-fast-compare
equal(window.a, window.b)
lodash
_.isEqual(a,b)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
JSON.stringify
react-fast-compare
lodash

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/122.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 122 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

react-fast-compare

2.6M/s

lodash

2.4M/s

JSON.stringify

1.7M/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ react-fast-compare	2,648,600 Ops/sec
lodash	2,377,704 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify	1,659,910 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 its test cases.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark compares three different approaches for comparing two arrays: `JSON.stringify`, `react-fast-compare`, and `_` (Lodash). The goal is to determine which approach is the fastest in terms of executions per second.

**Test Cases**

There are three test cases:

1. **JSON.stringify**: This function converts both arrays into strings using `JSON.stringify()` and then compares the resulting strings for equality.
2. **react-fast-compare**: This library provides a comparison function that can be used to compare two objects or arrays, including those with nested structures. The benchmark uses this function to compare the two input arrays.
3. **lodash**: Lodash is a utility library that provides various functions, including `isEqual()`, which can be used to compare two values for equality.

**Library and Its Purpose**

* **react-fast-compare**: A lightweight comparison library designed specifically for React applications. It's optimized for performance and provides a simple way to compare complex data structures.
* **lodash**: A popular utility library that provides various functions, including `isEqual()`, which can be used for comparing values.

**Options Compared**

The three approaches are compared in terms of their execution speed, measured as executions per second. The benchmark runs each test case multiple times and reports the average execution rate for each approach.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

* **JSON.stringify**: Pros: Simple to implement, easy to understand. Cons: Can be slow due to string conversion overhead, may not work correctly with non-ASCII characters or special arrays.
* **react-fast-compare**: Pros: Optimized for performance, designed specifically for complex data structures, and easy to use. Cons: May require additional setup or configuration, has a small footprint (1KB) which might be beneficial but is also a tradeoff in terms of feature set.
* **lodash**: Pros: Well-established library with a wide range of utility functions. Cons: May have overhead due to its larger size (15KB), and while `isEqual()` works correctly for basic equality checks, it may not handle complex data structures as efficiently as react-fast-compare.

**Special JS Features or Syntax**

None mentioned in the provided benchmark definition. However, it's worth noting that each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to handling special cases like:

* Null or undefined values
* NaN (Not a Number) values
* Dates
* Regular expressions
* Symbolic equality checks

**Other Alternatives**

For comparing arrays in JavaScript, other approaches could include:

* **Array.prototype.every()` and `Array.prototype.some()`: These methods can be used to check for exact equality between two arrays.
* **Set` data structures**: Using sets to compare arrays can provide fast equality checks, but may not work correctly if the arrays contain non-unique elements.

In summary, the benchmark compares three approaches for comparing arrays: `JSON.stringify`, `react-fast-compare`, and `_` (Lodash). The results suggest that `react-fast-compare` is the fastest approach, followed by `lodash`.

Array comparison: JSON.stringify vs react-fast-compare vs _.isEqual (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: `JSON.stringify vs react-fast-compare vs lodash`

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

JSON.stringify

react-fast-compare

lodash

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

Array comparison: JSON.stringify vs react-fast-compare vs _.isEqual (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: JSON.stringify vs react-fast-compare vs lodash

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

JSON.stringify

react-fast-compare

lodash

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

Related benchmarks

Comparing performance of: `JSON.stringify vs react-fast-compare vs lodash`