Benchmark: Boolean vs !! test

Script Preparation code:

var test = true;

Tests:

Test1
!!test
Test2
Boolean(test)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Test1
Test2

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 2 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/144.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 144 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Test1	72933128.0 Ops/sec
Test2	73755832.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark defined in the provided JSON is designed to measure the performance of two different methods for converting a value into a boolean: using the double negation operator (`!!`) and the built-in `Boolean` function.

### Comparison of Options

1. **Double Negation (`!!test`)**:
   - **Description**: This approach leverages the fact that the negation operator (`!`) converts a truthy value to `false` and a falsy value to `true`. Applying the negation operator twice (`!!`) then effectively converts a value to its boolean equivalent.
   - **Performance**: In the latest benchmark results, this method achieved approximately **263,800,544 executions per second**.
   - **Pros**:
     - Very concise syntax, which is favored in JavaScript for its brevity.
     - Widely understood by JavaScript developers as a common idiomatic way to convert values to booleans.
   - **Cons**:
     - Might be slightly less readable for those who are not familiar with this JavaScript idiom.

2. **Boolean Constructor (`Boolean(test)`)**:
   - **Description**: This function explicitly converts its argument to a boolean value based on the truthiness or falsiness of the input.
   - **Performance**: In the benchmark results, this method achieved about **261,090,112 executions per second**, which is marginally slower than the double negation.
   - **Pros**:
     - More explicit and possibly clearer to those who are new to JavaScript, making the intention of converting to boolean very clear.
   - **Cons**:
     - Slightly longer to type and can be seen as more verbose, which may not be as appealing in performance-critical contexts.

### Other Considerations
- **Execution Environment**: The benchmark results were obtained in a specific environment (Chrome 134 on Windows 10) which is important to consider as performance can vary across different browsers or platforms. 
- **Frequency of Use**: Considering that converting types to booleans is common in JavaScript, understanding the efficiency of these methods may inform best practices in writing performance-sensitive code.

### Alternatives
- **Using Conditional Statement**: Another approach, albeit less common, would be to use a conditional statement (e.g., `if (test) return true; else return false;`). While this would be clear to read, it is significantly less efficient due to added control flow overhead.
- **Ternary Operator**: Similarly, employing a ternary operator (`test ? true : false`) is explicit but can be slower due to the additional branching logic.

In conclusion, this benchmark effectively compares two prevalent methods of converting values to booleans in JavaScript. The findings suggest that while both methods achieve similar performance, the double negation (`!!`) is marginally faster, though readability preferences may guide a developer's choice depending on their specific context and team conventions.

Related benchmarks:

Boolean vs !! test (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: Test1 vs Test2

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Test1

Test2

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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