Benchmark: Math.min vs Array.sort[0] vs loop

Script Preparation code:

var massiveArray = new Array(100000).fill().map(e => Math.random())
var n;

Tests:

Math.min
n=Math.min(...massiveArray)
Array.sort[0]
n=massiveArray.sort()[0]
Loop
n=massiveArray[0];for(let i=0;i<massiveArray.length;i++){let v=massiveArray[i];if(v<n)n=v};

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Math.min
Array.sort[0]
Loop

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 7 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.4 Safari/605.1.15

Browser/OS: Safari 18 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Math.min	4496.2 Ops/sec
Array.sort[0]	65.5 Ops/sec
Loop	10390.7 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 7 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The provided benchmark evaluates the performance of three different methods for finding the minimum value in a large array filled with random numbers. The methods being tested are:

1. **Math.min with the Spread Operator**
2. **Array.sort()[0]**
3. **Manual Loop**

### Detailed Breakdown of Each Test Case

#### 1. Math.min(...massiveArray)
- **Method**: This approach uses `Math.min` combined with the spread operator (`...`), which takes all elements of `massiveArray` and passes them as individual arguments to the `Math.min` function.
- **Pros**:
  - Very concise and easy to read.
  - Built-in method optimized for performance in the JavaScript engine.
- **Cons**:
  - The spread operator can have limitations with large arrays due to argument length limits, which may result in a `RangeError` for extraordinarily large datasets.
- **Library**: This approach utilizes the standard JavaScript `Math` library.

#### 2. Array.sort()[0]
- **Method**: This technique first sorts the array in ascending order and then retrieves the first element, which is the minimum value.
- **Pros**:
  - Intuitive and straightforward concept; sorting an array makes it easy to retrieve minimum or maximum values.
- **Cons**:
  - Sorting has a time complexity of O(n log n), which is inefficient compared to other methods. For large arrays, this could result in significantly slower performance.
- **Library**: This method uses the built-in `Array` object, which is standard in JavaScript for handling lists of values.

#### 3. Loop
- **Method**: A manual loop iterates through the entire array, comparing each element to find the smallest value.
- **Pros**:
  - Efficient with a time complexity of O(n), making it well-suited for large datasets.
  - It avoids the overhead of sorting and works directly with the array elements.
- **Cons**:
  - More verbose than the other methods, potentially leading to errors if not implemented carefully.
- **Library**: This approach solely uses native JavaScript without additional libraries since it is a fundamental construct of the language.

### Benchmark Results Summary
According to the benchmark results, the three methods provided the following performance (executions per second):

- **Loop**: 10,390.74 executions/second (highest performance)
- **Math.min**: 4,496.16 executions/second
- **Array.sort()[0]**: 65.52 executions/second (lowest performance)

### Comparison and Considerations
- **Performance**: The manual loop is far superior in executing speed, making it the best choice for performance-centric applications, particularly with large datasets.
- **Simplicity vs Efficiency**: While using `Math.min` provides a clean and readable option, it entails risks of performance penalties with very large arrays. The sorting method is the least efficient, despite being simple to understand, which could lead to significant delays.
- **Usability**: A developer's choice might depend not only on performance but also on code clarity and maintainability for smaller arrays where the performance difference is negligible.

### Alternatives
Aside from the methods tested, there are several alternatives:
- **Reduce Method**: The `Array.prototype.reduce` method can be employed to find the minimum value in a more functional programming style.
- **Using a Library**: Libraries like Lodash offer utility functions such as `_.min`, which might be optimized and provide other useful features.
- **Typed Arrays**: For numeric computations, JavaScript Typed Arrays can improve performance with large volumes of data due to better memory allocation and access speed.

Each alternative has trade-offs regarding readability, performance, and nesting complexity. Engineers should consider the specific use case and dataset characteristics when choosing the best approach.

Related benchmarks:

Math.min vs Array.sort[0] vs loop (version: 1)

Test whether Math.min or Array.sort[0] is faster for large number arrays

Comparing performance of: Math.min vs Array.sort[0] vs Loop

Created: 7 days ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Math.min

Array.sort[0]

Loop

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 7 days ago):