Benchmark: split & join vs replace

Script Preparation code:

const address = '10 Downing Street,London,UK,SW10'

Tests:

split & join
address.split(',').join(', ')
replace
address.replace(/,/g, ', ')

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
split & join
replace

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/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 118 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
split & join	4658516.5 Ops/sec
replace	5733308.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark you provided compares two different approaches to manipulating strings in JavaScript, specifically for formatting addresses that contain commas:

1. **Using `split` & `join`:**  
   This approach employs both `split` and `join` methods of the string object.
   ```javascript
   address.split(',').join(', ')
   ```
   - **Description:** The `split(',')` method breaks the string into an array of substrings based on the commas. Then, `join(', ')` concatenates those substrings back into a single string, inserting a comma and a space between each substring.

2. **Using `replace`:**  
   This method uses the `replace` function with a regular expression.
   ```javascript
   address.replace(/,/g, ', ')
   ```
   - **Description:** The `replace` method looks for all occurrences of a comma (due to the global flag `/g` in the regex) and replaces each one with a comma followed by a space.

### Pros and Cons

- **`split` & `join`**
  - **Pros:**
    - Easy to understand and read, especially for those with experience in functional programming.
    - Useful when you need to manipulate string arrays more extensively post-split.
  - **Cons:**
    - Creates an intermediate array which could use additional memory, especially for larger strings. This might not be efficient for extremely large strings or in performance-critical code.
    
- **`replace`**
  - **Pros:**
    - More direct as it modifies the string in a single operation without creating an intermediate array.
    - Generally more efficient in terms of speed and memory usage for simple substitutions.
  - **Cons:**
    - Can be less readable for those not familiar with regular expressions.
    - Regular expressions have their own learning curve and can lead to more complex errors, particularly if the regex is not crafted carefully.

### Performance Results
The benchmark results show that the `split & join` method reached approximately 6,900,903 executions per second, while `replace` achieved about 6,183,761. This suggests that, at least in this test case on the given environment (Chrome 133 on Mac OS X), the `split` & `join` method performed better than `replace`.

### Other Considerations
- **Final Usage Context:** The choice between these two methods might depend on the broader context – if further array manipulations are necessary, using `split` might make more sense despite the overhead. Conversely, if the goal is purely a simple string transformation, `replace` may be preferred.
- **Scalability:** For very large datasets or performance-critical applications, profiling both methods under realistic load conditions would be necessary to ensure the most efficient approach.
- **Regular Expressions:** While using regex in the `replace` function is powerful, it also requires a good understanding to avoid unexpected behavior, especially with more complicated patterns.

### Alternatives
Other alternatives to consider might include:
- **String interpolation or template literals:** Though not directly applicable in this case, for constructing strings in general, utilizing template literals can often lead to clearer code.
- **Using external libraries:** Libraries like lodash can offer utility functions for dealing with strings, though for basic usages like this, native methods are often sufficient.
- **Other string manipulation methods:** Depending on the specific needs, methods like `String.prototype.trim()` might be beneficial if trimming whitespace is needed as well.

Overall, the choice between these methods largely comes down to the specific requirements of your application and the level of readability you want to maintain in your code.

Related benchmarks:

split & join vs replace (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: split & join vs replace

Created: one month ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

split & join

replace

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):