Benchmark: javascript case insensitive compare with -1 0 1 for sorting

HTML Preparation code:

<!--your preparation HTML code goes here-->

Script Preparation code:

function generateRandomString(length) {
  const characters = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789';
  let result = '';
  const charactersLength = characters.length;
  for (let i = 0; i < length; i++) {
    result += characters.charAt(Math.floor(Math.random() * charactersLength));
  }
  return result;
}

function generateData(numStrings) {
  const stringArray = [];
  const minLength = 3;
  const maxLength = 20;

  for (let i = 0; i < numStrings; i += 1) {
    stringArray.push(generateRandomString(minLength + Math.floor(Math.random() * (maxLength - minLength))));
  }
  
  return stringArray;
}

const initialData = generateData(1000);

Tests:

built-in sort (CASE SENSITIVE)
const data = initialData.slice(); data.sort();
localeCompare base sort
const data = initialData.slice(); data.sort((l, r) => (l || '').localeCompare((r || ''), undefined, {sensitivity: 'base'}));
toLowerCase simple sort
const data = initialData.slice(); data.sort((a, b) => { a = a.toLowerCase(); b = b.toLowerCase(); if (a === b) { return 0; } else if (a < b) { return -1; } else { return 1; } });
toLowerCase with manual compare sort
const data = initialData.slice(); data.sort((a, b) => { a = a.toLowerCase(); b = b.toLowerCase(); for (let i = 0; i < a.length && i < b.length; i += 1) { if (a[i] !== b[i]) { if (a[i] < b[i]) { return -1; } else { return 1; } } } if (a.length == b.length) { return 0; } else if (a.length < b.length) { return -1; } else { return 1; } });
manual ascii compare sort
const data = initialData.slice(); data.sort((a, b) => { for (let i = 0; i < a.length && i < b.length; i += 1) { let l = a.charCodeAt(i); let r = b.charCodeAt(i); if (l >= 65 && l < 91) { l += 32; } if (r >= 65 && r < 91) { r += 32; } if (l !== r) { if (l < r) { return -1; } else { return 1; } } } if (a.length == b.length) { return 0; } else if (a.length < b.length) { return -1; } else { return 1; } });

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
built-in sort (CASE SENSITIVE)
localeCompare base sort
toLowerCase simple sort
toLowerCase with manual compare sort
manual ascii compare sort

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 135 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
built-in sort (CASE SENSITIVE)	2961.3 Ops/sec
localeCompare base sort	14.1 Ops/sec
toLowerCase simple sort	1063.8 Ops/sec
toLowerCase with manual compare sort	1074.2 Ops/sec
manual ascii compare sort	2044.3 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark outlined in the provided JSON measures the performance of different approaches to sorting strings in JavaScript, particularly with a focus on case-insensitive comparisons. Here's a breakdown of the different test cases, their methodologies, and implications:

### Test Case Breakdown

1. **Built-in sort (CASE SENSITIVE)**
   - **Benchmark Definition**: `data.sort();`
   - **Description**: This uses JavaScript's built-in `sort()` method to arrange the strings as they are, considering case sensitivity.
   - **Pros**: 
     - Fast implementation due to optimization in the JavaScript engine.
   - **Cons**: 
     - Case-sensitive sorting can lead to unexpected order when one is expecting a case-insensitive sort. For example, "apple" would come after "Banana".
  
2. **LocaleCompare base sort**
   - **Benchmark Definition**: `data.sort((l, r) => l.localeCompare(r, undefined, { sensitivity: 'base' }));`
   - **Description**: Utilizes `localeCompare` function with specified options for case-insensitive comparison, effectively treating letters as equal regardless of their case.
   - **Pros**: 
     - More intuitive results for end-users expecting natural language sorting; it handles locale-specific rules.
   - **Cons**: 
     - Performance may be slower than the built-in `sort()` because of the overhead from locale-specific comparisons.
  
3. **toLowerCase simple sort**
   - **Benchmark Definition**: 
     ```javascript
     data.sort((a, b) => { 
       a = a.toLowerCase(); 
       b = b.toLowerCase(); 
       return (a === b) ? 0 : (a < b ? -1 : 1); 
     });
     ```
   - **Description**: Converts both strings to lowercase before comparing them.
   - **Pros**:
     - Simple to understand and implement; guarantees case insensitivity.
   - **Cons**: 
     - Might exhibit performance issues as it requires additional processing for each comparison due to the `toLowerCase()` calls.
  
4. **toLowerCase with manual compare sort**
   - **Benchmark Definition**: 
     ```javascript
     data.sort((a, b) => {
       a = a.toLowerCase();
       b = b.toLowerCase();
       for (let i = 0; i < a.length && i < b.length; i++) {
         if (a[i] !== b[i]) {
           return a[i] < b[i] ? -1 : 1;
         }
       }
       return a.length - b.length; // Length comparison as a fallback
     });
     ```
   - **Description**: Similar to the previous method but introduces a loop to compare each character manually.
   - **Pros**:
     - Offers a more detailed character-by-character comparison, which can handle cases where strings differ in length.
   - **Cons**: 
     - More complex and potentially slower due to character-wise iteration. Also includes overhead for calling `toLowerCase()`.
  
5. **Manual ascii compare sort**
   - **Benchmark Definition**: 
     ```javascript
     data.sort((a, b) => {
       for (let i = 0; i < a.length && i < b.length; i++) {
         let l = a.charCodeAt(i);
         let r = b.charCodeAt(i);
         if (l >= 65 && l < 91) { l += 32; } // Converts uppercase to lowercase ASCII
         if (r >= 65 && r < 91) { r += 32; }
         if (l !== r) {
           return (l < r) ? -1 : 1;
         }
       }
       return a.length - b.length;
     });
     ```
   - **Description**: Performs a character comparison using ASCII values after adjusting for case.
   - **Pros**:
     - Offers customized control over the sorting, treating ASCII values directly, which can be performant for fixed character sets.
   - **Cons**: 
     - Complexity increases and may be less readable, while also requiring more manual maintenance of the code.

### Performance Results

From the benchmark results provided:
- The built-in sort method is the fastest, highlighting the efficiency of native implementations for common tasks.
- The manual ASCII compare and simple toLowerCase methods follow, indicating fairly good performance but with increased complexity.
- The localeCompare base method performs the least effectively, suggesting that while it's the most linguistically accurate, its overhead may not be justified in every case.

### Alternatives

- **Array.prototype.sort** with different comparisons can also include custom sorting functions specific to the application's needs.
- **Third-party Libraries**: Libraries like Lodash or underscore provide advanced sorting utilities that take care of edge cases but may introduce additional overhead due to their abstraction layers.
- **Custom Comparison Functions**: Creating tailor-made functions can yield optimized performance for specific datasets, though they require more effort to maintain and validate.

In practical scenarios, choosing the right sorting strategy will depend on the dataset characteristics and the performance requirements specific to the application.

Related benchmarks:

javascript case insensitive compare with -1 0 1 for sorting (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: built-in sort (CASE SENSITIVE) vs localeCompare base sort vs toLowerCase simple sort vs toLowerCase with manual compare sort vs manual ascii compare sort

Created: one month ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

built-in sort (CASE SENSITIVE)

localeCompare base sort

toLowerCase simple sort

toLowerCase with manual compare sort

manual ascii compare sort

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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