Benchmark: Logs - RegEx.test vs. String.includes vs. String.match

Script Preparation code:

const regex = /TF_LOG|(?:Creating|Modifying|Destroying)\.\.\./;
const string = "module.helm_agent.helm_release.agent: Still modifying... [id=agent-bors, 10s elapsed]";

Tests:

match
function isRelevantLogEntryStrMatch(logEntry) { return ( logEntry.match('TF_LOG') || logEntry.match('Creating...') || logEntry.match('Modifying...') || logEntry.match('Destroying...') ); } isRelevantLogEntryStrMatch(string);
includes
function isRelevantLogEntryIncludes(logEntry) { return ( logEntry.includes('TF_LOG') || logEntry.includes('Creating...') || logEntry.includes('Modifying...') || logEntry.includes('Destroying...') ); } isRelevantLogEntryIncludes(string);
regex
function isRelevantLogEntryRegex(logEntry) { return regex.test(logEntry); } isRelevantLogEntryRegex(string);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
match
includes
regex

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/134.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 134 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

includes

184.2M/s

regex

20.4M/s

match

2.0M/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ includes	184,235,808 Ops/sec
regex	20,448,860 Ops/sec
match	1,956,080 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The provided benchmark compares three different approaches for checking whether a log entry contains specific keywords, namely: `String.match`, `String.includes`, and `RegExp.test`. Each method has its own implementation and performance characteristics.

### Options Compared

1. **String.match**:
   - **Implementation**: This method uses regular expressions (regex) to search for matches in the string.
   - **Test Function**:
     ```javascript
     function isRelevantLogEntryStrMatch(logEntry) {
         return (
             logEntry.match('TF_LOG') ||
             logEntry.match('Creating...') ||
             logEntry.match('Modifying...') ||
             logEntry.match('Destroying...')
         );
     }
     ```

2. **String.includes**:
   - **Implementation**: This method checks if a string contains a specified substring.
   - **Test Function**:
     ```javascript
     function isRelevantLogEntryIncludes(logEntry) {
         return (
             logEntry.includes('TF_LOG') ||
             logEntry.includes('Creating...') ||
             logEntry.includes('Modifying...') ||
             logEntry.includes('Destroying...')
         );
     }
     ```

3. **RegExp.test** (using the pre-defined regex):
   - **Implementation**: This method tests if the regex matches the string.
   - **Test Function**:
     ```javascript
     function isRelevantLogEntryRegex(logEntry) {
         return regex.test(logEntry);
     }
     ```

### Performance Results

The benchmark results show that:
- The **String.includes** method is the fastest, with a performance of approximately **184 million executions per second**.
- The **RegExp.test** method follows, with about **20 million executions per second**.
- The **String.match** approach is the slowest, with about **1.96 million executions per second**.

### Pros and Cons

- **String.match**:
  - **Pros**: Flexible due to regex capabilities, can handle complex patterns.
  - **Cons**: Generally slower because of regex compilation and evaluation overhead.

- **String.includes**:
  - **Pros**: Fast, straightforward, and easy to understand. Ideal for simple substring checks.
  - **Cons**: Limited to exact substrings; cannot handle complex matching patterns.

- **RegExp.test**:
  - **Pros**: Maintains the flexibility of regex but can be faster than `String.match` for simple checks, depending on regex complexity.
  - **Cons**: Still has performance overhead compared to `String.includes`.

### Considerations

- When performance is critical and the checks are for specific substrings, `String.includes` is the best choice due to its speed and simplicity.
- If more complex pattern matching is required, `RegExp.test` might be preferable to `String.match`, especially if reused regex patterns can be defined, thereby avoiding re-compilation on each call.
- The overhead of regular expressions may not be warranted for simple checks, so understanding the specific requirements of the task at hand is vital in selecting the best approach.

### Alternatives

Other alternatives for checking the presence of substrings could include:
- **Manual String Comparison**: For specific cases where the keywords are known and few, manual substrings could potentially process faster than both `includes` and regex methods.
- **Using a Set or Trie Data Structure**: For more complex scenarios and larger collections of keywords, a Set or Trie could be used for effective membership testing.

Overall, the choice among these options should be guided by both performance considerations and the complexity of the checks required in the context of your application.

Logs - RegEx.test vs. String.includes vs. String.match (version: 3)

Comparing performance of: `match vs includes vs regex`

Created: one year ago by: Registered User

Go to the latest result

match

includes

regex

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

Logs - RegEx.test vs. String.includes vs. String.match (version: 3)

Comparing performance of: match vs includes vs regex

Created: one year ago by: Registered User

Go to the latest result

match

includes

regex

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

Related benchmarks

Comparing performance of: `match vs includes vs regex`