Benchmark: if vs ternary operator v3

Tests:

if
var $number = 0, $result = ""; for (var i=0,l=10;i<l;++i) { $number = Math.random() * 1000; if ($number === 250) $result += "1"; } return $result;
ternary operator
var $number = 0, $result = ""; for (var i=0,l=10;i<l;++i) { $number = Math.random() * 1000; $result += ($number === 250 ? "1" : ""); } return $result;

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
if
ternary operator

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/140.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 140 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
if	11078787.0 Ops/sec
ternary operator	9514271.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

I'd be happy to explain what's being tested in this benchmark.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark compares the performance of two approaches: using an `if` statement and using a ternary operator (also known as a conditional expression) to increment a string result. The benchmark is designed to measure the difference in execution speed between these two alternatives.

**Options Compared**

There are two options being compared:

1. **If Statement**: This option uses a traditional `if` statement with an `if` condition, followed by an `else` clause.
2. **Ternary Operator**: This option uses a ternary operator to concisely express the conditional logic.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

* **If Statement**:
	+ Pros: Easy to understand and maintain for developers who are familiar with traditional conditional statements.
	+ Cons: Can be slower due to the overhead of parsing and executing multiple statements.
* **Ternary Operator**:
	+ Pros: More concise and expressive, making it easier to read and write code.
	+ Cons: May require a higher level of proficiency in JavaScript syntax to understand and use correctly.

**Other Considerations**

The benchmark also considers the impact of variable initialization on performance. In both options, the `$number` variable is initialized with a random value before each iteration of the loop. The use of `Math.random()` can introduce some randomness in the execution time, which may affect the results.

**Library and Special JS Feature Used**

There are no external libraries used in this benchmark. However, it's worth noting that JavaScript 8 introduced the `let` keyword, which allows for block scope variables like `$number`. This feature is not mentioned in the benchmark results provided, but it would be interesting to see if the performance difference between `var` and `let` would show up in a similar benchmark.

**Test Case Explanation**

The test cases are designed to exercise the conditional logic of both options. The loop iterates 10 times, and on each iteration:

* For the **If Statement**, the value of `$number` is set to a random number between 0 and 1000.
* If the value is equal to 250, the string "1" is appended to the result variable.
* After the `if` statement, if the condition was met, the loop continues. If not, the execution stops.

For the **Ternary Operator**, the same logic applies, but instead of using an `if` statement, a ternary operator is used to concisely express the conditional increment:

```javascript
$result += ($number === 250 ? "1" : "");
```

**Alternative Approaches**

Some alternative approaches could be considered:

* Using a switch statement: This would eliminate the need for multiple comparisons and potentially reduce overhead.
* Using a lookup table: If the possible values of `$number` were limited to a small set, using a lookup table might provide better performance.

However, these alternatives would require additional changes to the benchmark code and might not accurately reflect the typical use cases for JavaScript developers.

Related benchmarks:

if vs ternary operator v3 (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: if vs ternary operator

Created: 7 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

if

ternary operator

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):