Benchmark: string/number/symbol speed test

Tests:

Symbol
const a = Symbol('asdf'); const b = Symbol('qwer'); a === b
Number
const a = 1; const b = 2; a === b
String
const a = '1'; const b = '2'; a === b

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Symbol
Number
String

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 27 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:136.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/136.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 136 on Ubuntu

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Test name	Executions per second
Symbol	8037110.5 Ops/sec
Number	1022727616.0 Ops/sec
String	1023782144.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 5 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The provided benchmark is testing the performance of three different JavaScript data types: **Symbols**, **Numbers**, and **Strings**. Each test compares two instances of these types to determine the speed of the equality comparison operation `===`, which checks for strict equality in JavaScript.

### Test Cases and Options Compared

1. **Symbol Comparison**:
    - **Benchmark Definition**: `const a = Symbol('asdf'); const b = Symbol('qwer'); a === b`
    - **Test Name**: "Symbol"
    - **Description**: Symbols are unique and immutable data types introduced in ES6. Each Symbol is distinct, even if they are created with the same description.
    - **Performance**: The benchmark results show that the execution speed of this comparison is significantly lower than that of Numbers and Strings, with only about 7.3 million executions per second.
    - **Pros**: Symbols are great for creating unique identifiers that won't clash with others, making them useful for object keys and constants.
    - **Cons**: Due to their unique nature, comparisons are slower. This impact is reflected in the benchmark results.

2. **Number Comparison**:
    - **Benchmark Definition**: `const a = 1; const b = 2; a === b`
    - **Test Name**: "Number"
    - **Performance**: It achieved the highest performance with about 235 million executions per second.
    - **Pros**: Number comparisons are typically very fast due to the way JavaScript handles numerical types (floating-point representation). They are fundamental to many calculations and operations.
    - **Cons**: When dealing with precision, especially in floating-point arithmetic, there can be issues such as unexpected results upon comparison due to rounding errors.

3. **String Comparison**:
    - **Benchmark Definition**: `const a = '1'; const b = '2'; a === b`
    - **Test Name**: "String"
    - **Performance**: This type of comparison achieved about 225 million executions per second, making it the second fastest of the three tests.
    - **Pros**: String comparisons are useful for checking values and are straightforward, but the performance is generally slower than that of numerical comparisons.
    - **Cons**: Longer strings can significantly slow down comparisons, and there can be memory overhead if large numbers of strings need to be handled.

### Summary of Results
- **Numbers** outperform both **Strings** and **Symbols**, which showcases their efficiency in comparison operations.
- **Strings** are faster than **Symbols**, but still slower than Numbers, indicating that while they provide flexibility, their performance can be a consideration in performance-critical applications.
- **Symbols** should be used judiciously when uniqueness is a priority, but developers should be mindful of their comparatively slower performance during comparisons.

### Other Considerations and Alternatives
- When considering alternatives, developers may look at composite objects or other data structures, depending on their needs for performance versus the requirement for uniqueness. For example, using plain objects for unique keys with some additional logic might sometimes serve a better purpose depending on the scenario.
- For numerical comparisons, developers may also consider optimizing how numbers are stored and compared (for example, using typed arrays) if they are working in performance-critical areas.
- For string comparisons, techniques such as hashing or using specific algorithms could help optimize performance when dealing with vast amounts of string data.

Overall, this benchmark illustrates that when performance is crucial, the choice of data type in JavaScript can have significant implications on execution speed, especially in high-demand environments.

Related benchmarks:

string/number/symbol speed test (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: Symbol vs Number vs String

Created: 5 months ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Symbol

Number

String

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 5 months ago):