Benchmark: json stringify vs array tostring vs type coercion

Script Preparation code:

function moreData(arr, left) {
  if(left === 0) return arr;
  else {
    arr.push(Math.floor(Math.random() * 256));
  	return moreData(arr, left - 1);
  }
}
function makeTestData() { return moreData([], 4); }

Tests:

toString
makeTestData().toString()
JSON.stringify
JSON.stringify(makeTestData());
type coercion
makeTestData() + ''

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
toString
JSON.stringify
type coercion

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/146.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 146 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
toString	2290630.2 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify	2498110.0 Ops/sec
type coercion	2447368.5 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided JSON and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark measures the performance of three different approaches to convert a JavaScript array into a string:

1. `toString()`
2. `JSON.stringify()`
3. "Type coercion" (which is actually an implementation of `toString()` without using `String.prototype.toString()`)

**Options Compared**

The options being compared are:

* `toString()`: uses the built-in `toString()` method to convert the array into a string.
* `JSON.stringify()`: uses the `JSON.stringify()` function to serialize the array into a JSON string, which can be converted to a string using `toString()`.
* "Type coercion": an implementation of `toString()` without using `String.prototype.toString()`.

**Pros and Cons**

Here are some pros and cons of each approach:

* `toString()`:
	+ Pros: lightweight, simple, and widely supported.
	+ Cons: might not be as efficient or robust for large arrays, and can produce unexpected results if the array contains non-string elements.
* `JSON.stringify()`: 
	+ Pros: more efficient and robust than `toString()` for large arrays, and produces a consistent result regardless of the array's contents. However, it can be slower than `toString()` due to the serialization overhead.
	+ Cons: requires JSON parsing and can be slower than `toString()` for very large arrays.
* "Type coercion":
	+ Pros: similar performance characteristics to `toString()`, but avoids using the slower `String.prototype.toString()` method.
	+ Cons: might not be as widely supported or recognized by browsers, and can produce unexpected results if the array contains non-string elements.

**Library**

The benchmark uses the `JSON` library, which is a built-in JavaScript library that provides functions for serializing and deserializing JSON data. The `JSON.stringify()` function is used to serialize the array into a JSON string, which can be converted to a string using `toString()`.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

There are no special JS features or syntaxes being tested in this benchmark. It's purely about comparing the performance of different approaches to convert an array into a string.

**Other Alternatives**

If you were to implement this benchmark, other alternatives could include:

* Using a custom serialization function that uses a specific algorithm to convert arrays into strings.
* Using a library like Lodash or Moment.js to serialize and deserialize data.
* Using a web worker or worker threads to offload the string conversion work.

Keep in mind that these alternatives might not be relevant to the current benchmark's goals, but they could be explored in other contexts.

Related benchmarks:

json stringify vs array tostring vs type coercion (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: toString vs JSON.stringify vs type coercion

Created: 6 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

toString

JSON.stringify

type coercion

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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