Benchmark: Try-catch when calling a function

Script Preparation code:

let total = 0;

function foo() {
  total += 1;
}

Tests:

With Try/Catch
for (let t = 0; t < 10000; ++t) { try { foo(); } catch { total += 2; } }
Without Try/Catch
for (let t = 0; t < 10000; ++t) { foo(); }

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
With Try/Catch
Without Try/Catch

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) SamsungBrowser/28.0 Chrome/130.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome Mobile 130 on Android

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
With Try/Catch	23260.1 Ops/sec
Without Try/Catch	8139.4 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 3 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark you provided measures the performance difference between two approaches for executing a JavaScript function — using a `try/catch` block versus executing the function without any error handling. Here's a breakdown of what is being tested, along with the pros and cons of each approach, and additional considerations.

### Benchmark Overview

- **Function Under Test**: The benchmark uses a simple function called `foo()`, which increments a shared global variable `total` by 1 each time it is called.
  
- **Test Scenarios**:
  1. **With Try/Catch**: Calls the function within a `try/catch` block. If an error occurs while calling `foo()`, the catch block increments `total` by 2.
  2. **Without Try/Catch**: Calls the function directly without error handling.

### Performance Metrics

The results reveal the following performances:
- **With Try/Catch**: 28,706 executions per second
- **Without Try/Catch**: 19,834 executions per second

### Analysis of Approaches

1. **With Try/Catch**:
   - **Pros**:
     - Provides a safety net for catching errors. If `foo()` throws an error, the program can still handle it gracefully (incrementing `total`).
     - Useful in scenarios where errors are expected, and handling them is necessary to maintain application stability.
   - **Cons**:
     - Performance overhead: The `try/catch` mechanism can introduce a delay, as the JavaScript engine has to handle potential errors even if they don't occur.
     - Additional global variable manipulation (adding 2 to `total`) on error can muddy the performance profile if errors are frequent.

2. **Without Try/Catch**:
   - **Pros**:
     - Generally faster, as there's no overhead involved in handling potential errors.
     - Simpler execution path and fewer instructions leading to potential performance gains.
   - **Cons**:
     - If `foo()` throws an error, it won't be handled, potentially leading to unhandled exceptions and application crashes.

### Other Considerations

- **Error Handling Strategy**: Choosing between these two scenarios often depends on the nature of the application. If `foo()` is expected to throw exceptions rarely, running it without a try/catch may be optimal. Conversely, if it's common for `foo()` to fail, then robustness may take precedence over raw performance.

- **Browser Variability**: Performance tests are run in a specific browser and environment. Results can vary significantly on different browsers or systems due to differences in JavaScript engines and optimizations.

### Alternatives

- **Error Handling with Promises**: Instead of using `try/catch`, using Promise-based architecture helps in managing asynchronous operations and their errors gracefully. Example: wrapping `foo()` in a Promise and using `.catch()` method for error handling.

- **Using Error Boundaries**: For React applications, using error boundaries (a higher-order component) provides a way to catch JavaScript errors without blocking rendering, making it a more structured approach for handling errors in UI-heavy applications.

- **Logging Errors**: Instead of modifying the `total` within the catch block, error logging (e.g., sending error details to a logging service) without altering the flow might be beneficial, particularly in production environments.

Understanding these options allows developers to better make informed choices about error handling and performance optimization in their applications.

Related benchmarks:

Try-catch when calling a function (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: With Try/Catch vs Without Try/Catch

Created: 3 months ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

With Try/Catch

Without Try/Catch

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 3 months ago):