Benchmark: Ternary vs conditional OR

Script Preparation code:

this.condition = !!Math.round(Math.random());

Tests:

Ternary
return this.condition ? this.condition : null;
Logical
return this.condition || null;

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Ternary
Logical

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one year ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/130.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 130 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Ternary	47284384.0 Ops/sec
Logical	48644564.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark defined in the JSON compares two different approaches to conditional expression evaluation in JavaScript: the ternary operator and the logical OR operator.

### Betweeen Ternary and Logical OR

1. **Ternary Operator (`this.condition ? this.condition : null`)**
   - **Description**: The ternary operator is a shorthand for an `if-else` statement. In this case, it checks whether `this.condition` is truthy. If it is, it returns `this.condition`; otherwise, it returns `null`.
   - **Pros**:
     - Explicitly captures the conditional logic, making it clear that something specific is being returned if the condition is satisfied.
     - Can handle more complex conditions and multiple branches (i.e., can be nested).
   - **Cons**:
     - Slightly less concise for simple operations compared to logical operators.
     - In terms of performance, it may have minor overhead.
  
2. **Logical OR Operator (`this.condition || null`)**
   - **Description**: This expression uses the logical OR operator to evaluate `this.condition`. If `this.condition` is truthy, it is returned; otherwise, `null` is returned.
   - **Pros**:
     - Concise and easy to read for simple checks like `this.condition || null`.
     - The idiomatic use of logical operators in JavaScript often leads to cleaner code.
   - **Cons**:
     - It can be less clear when more complex logic is required since it relies on JavaScript's type coercion (truthy or falsy behavior).
     - Not suitable for cases where you need to specify more than two possible outcomes.

### Results Analysis

The benchmark results showcase how each approach performed in terms of execution speed in a specific browser environment (Chrome 129 running on Mac OS X 10.15.7).

- **Ternary**: 83,861,760 executions per second
- **Logical OR**: 82,234,232 executions per second

In this benchmark, the ternary operator performed slightly better than the logical OR. The difference, though, might be negligible in many real-world applications, especially considering that performance can vary based on factors such as the JavaScript engine implementation, browser versions, and system resources.

### Alternatives

- **If-Else Statements**: Instead of both constructs, a traditional `if-else` statement can be used. However, this would be less concise and is generally not preferred for simple conditional statements due to verbosity.
- **Nullish Coalescing (`??`)**: In ES2020, the nullish coalescing operator can also be useful when checking for `null` or `undefined`, as it only defaults if the left-hand side is nullish (i.e., `null` or `undefined`). The equivalent expression could be `this.condition ?? null`.
  
  Example:
  ```javascript
  return this.condition ?? null;
  ```
  
This operator might offer better behavior in cases where you specifically want to handle `null` and `undefined` distinctly.

### Conclusion

In this benchmark, we evaluated two common JavaScript approaches to conditionally returning a value. The ternary operator and logical OR both provide effective methods for achieving similar outcomes, with each having its advantages and use cases based on readability, succinctness, and the specific requirements of the situation. Benchmarks like this can highlight potential performance impacts in tight loops or performance-critical sections of applications, although usually developers will prioritize clarity and maintainability in most codebases.

Related benchmarks:

Ternary vs conditional OR (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Ternary vs Logical

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Ternary

Logical

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated one year ago):