Benchmark: Compare weeks via number or string

Script Preparation code:

var week1 = { year: 2024, week: 1 };
var week2 = { year: 2024, week: 3 };
var week3 = { year: 2025, week: 3 };

const weeks = [week3, week2, week1];

const sortWeeksViaNumbers = (w1, w2)=>(w1.year * 100 + w1.week) - (w2.year * 100 + w2.week)

const sortWeeksViaDoubleComparison = (w1, w2)=>{ 
  if (w1.year !== w2.year){ return w1.year - w2.year } 
  return w1.week - w2.week
}

const sortWeeksViaStrings = (w1, w2)=>{ 
  `${w1.year}-${w1.week.toString().padStart(2,0)}`.localeCompare(`${w2.year}-${w2.week.toString().padStart(2,0)}`)
}

Tests:

Sort via numbers
weeks.sort(sortWeeksViaNumbers)
Sort via double comparison
weeks.sort(sortWeeksViaDoubleComparison)
Sort via string comparison
weeks.sort(sortWeeksViaStrings)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Sort via numbers
Sort via double comparison
Sort via string comparison

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 6 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:143.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/143.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 143 on Mac OS X 10.15

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Sort via numbers	25980612.0 Ops/sec
Sort via double comparison	26016960.0 Ops/sec
Sort via string comparison	4416219.5 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 6 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

### Benchmark Overview

The benchmark compares different methods of sorting a collection of week objects, where each week object consists of a `year` and a `week` property. The goal is to evaluate the performance of three sorting approaches in JavaScript:

1. **Comparing using numeric calculations**
2. **Using explicit double comparison (if-else statements)**
3. **Comparing strings formatted with locale-aware comparison**

### Sorting Methods

1. **Sort via Numbers**:
   - **Implementation**: Combines the `year` and `week` into a single numeric value for each week. The sorting function calculates `year * 100 + week` to achieve a consistent numeric representation.
   - **Pros**:
     - Simple and efficient; mathematical operations are typically fast in JavaScript.
     - Direct numeric comparison helps in quickly establishing order.
   - **Cons**:
     - Potentially less readable compared to some explicit comparison methods.
     
2. **Sort via Double Comparison**:
   - **Implementation**: Compares `year` first, and if they're equal, compares `week`. This is done using a series of `if` statements.
   - **Pros**:
     - More intuitive for developers; directly reflects the logic of comparing individual components.
     - Can make it easier to understand the sorting order at a glance.
   - **Cons**:
     - Slightly slower than numeric sorting; involves multiple conditional checks, which can add overhead.

3. **Sort via String Comparison**:
   - **Implementation**: Formats each week object as a string in the format "YYYY-WW" (with leading zero for weeks) and uses `localeCompare` to perform the sorting.
   - **Pros**:
     - Locale-aware: `localeCompare` can account for language and cultural differences, ensuring proper sorting in various contexts.
     - Reads clearly; string representation is straightforward.
   - **Cons**:
     - Generally slower due to the overhead of string manipulation and locale-aware comparison.
     - A heavier approach in terms of memory and CPU usage; requires more computation for string formatting.

### Alternative Approaches

1. **Built-in Sorting Functions**: JavaScript’s `Array.sort()` with a custom comparison function could be simplified to directly use the double comparison logic.
   
2. **Third-Party Libraries**: Libraries such as Lodash or Underscore can provide utilities aimed at optimized data manipulation, including sorting functions that might explore more complex heuristics for performance.

3. **Typed Arrays**: If the dataset is massive, employing typed arrays in JavaScript might provide better performance, especially in numeric manipulation cases.

### Benchmark Results Summary

The benchmark tests indicate the following executions per second:  
- **Sort via Double Comparison**: 26,016,960 ops/sec  
- **Sort via Numbers**: 25,980,612 ops/sec  
- **Sort via String Comparison**: 4,416,219.5 ops/sec

From the results, it is evident that both numeric and double comparison sorting methods are highly efficient and provide comparable performance, with string comparison being significantly slower due to the additional complexity involved in formatting and comparing strings.

### Conclusion

Software engineers can benefit from understanding the trade-offs of these sorting approaches in terms of performance, readability, and maintainability. The choice of which sorting method to use can depend on the specific use case, the expected size of input data, and whether performance or clarity of the code is more critical.

Related benchmarks:

Compare weeks via number or string (version: 1)

Test the speed of comparing number vs comparing with double comparison vs comparing strings in js

Comparing performance of: Sort via numbers vs Sort via double comparison vs Sort via string comparison

Created: 6 months ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Sort via numbers

Sort via double comparison

Sort via string comparison

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 6 months ago):