Benchmark: Some vs Find boolean

Script Preparation code:

var data = []

for (let i = 0; i < 50; ++i) data.push({ username: 'toto' })
data.push({ username: 'titi' })
for (let i = 0; i < 25; ++i) data.push({ username: 'toto' })

Tests:

Find
!!data.find(e => e.username === 'titi')
Some
data.some(e => e.username === 'titi')

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Find
Some

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 3 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Find	23955984.0 Ops/sec
Some	23816636.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 6 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

This benchmark compares two different methods for checking if an object with a specific username exists within an array of user objects in JavaScript: the `Array.prototype.find()` method and the `Array.prototype.some()` method.

### Test Cases Overview

1. **Find** - This test is executed using the following benchmark definition:
   ```javascript
   !!data.find(e => e.username === 'titi')
   ```
   - **Purpose**: The `find` method searches through the array `data` and returns the first instance of an element that meets the condition specified in the callback function (`e.username === 'titi'`). The `!!` operator converts the result to a boolean value. If an object with the username 'titi' is found, it returns `true`; otherwise, it returns `false`.

2. **Some** - This test is executed using the following benchmark definition:
   ```javascript
   data.some(e => e.username === 'titi')
   ```
   - **Purpose**: The `some` method also searches through the array `data` and returns `true` if any element meets the specified condition. If it finds at least one element satisfying the condition (`e.username === 'titi'`), it returns `true`; otherwise, `false`.

### Comparison of Options

- **Performance**: 
  - According to the benchmark results, the `some` method exhibited a higher number of executions per second (8,921,853) compared to the `find` method (8,756,952). This indicates that, at least in this particular testing environment and dataset size, `some` is faster than `find`.
  
- **Return Values**:
  - `find` returns the actual object that meets the condition or `undefined` if not found. Therefore, the result must be converted to a boolean using `!!`, which adds a slight performance overhead.
  - `some`, on the other hand, returns a boolean directly, making it more efficient when you only need to check for existence.

### Pros and Cons

- **`Array.prototype.find()`**:
  - **Pros**:
    - Retrieves the found object, which can be useful if you need the actual data.
  - **Cons**:
    - Slightly slower due to the need to convert to boolean and also searching through the entire array even after finding the match for other crux cases.

- **`Array.prototype.some()`**:
  - **Pros**:
    - Directly returns a boolean and stops searching as soon as it finds a match, which often makes it more efficient for existence checks.
  - **Cons**:
    - Does not return the found item, which means if you need the object itself, a separate call to `find` would be necessary.

### Library Usage
In this benchmark, no external libraries are used. Both methods are built into the core JavaScript language as part of the Array prototype, which makes these methods widely supported and available in all modern JavaScript environments.

### Other Alternatives

1. **`for` Loop**: You can manually iterate through the array and check if any user has the username `titi`. This could be highly optimized for certain datasets:
   ```javascript
   let found = false;
   for (let i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
       if (data[i].username === 'titi') {
           found = true;
           break;
       }
   }
   ```

2. **Using `filter()**: If you need to fetch all matching items, you could use:
   ```javascript
   const results = data.filter(e => e.username === 'titi');
   const exists = results.length > 0;
   ```
   This method is useful if you need multiple matches but can be less efficient due to processing unnecessary elements and allocating additional space for results.

3. **Map for Lookup**: If the dataset is large and frequent lookups are necessary, consider transforming the array into an object or `Map` where usernames are keys for O(1) lookup times:
   ```javascript
   const userMap = new Map(data.map(user => [user.username, user]));
   const exists = userMap.has('titi');
   ```

### Considerations
The choice between `find` and `some` typically comes down to whether you need access to the found element or just the existence check. Understanding the performance implications and the nature of your data can guide you in making the best choice for your specific use case.

Related benchmarks:

Some vs Find boolean (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: Find vs Some

Created: 6 months ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Find

Some

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 6 months ago):