Benchmark: Native Number vs Lodash toNumber

HTML Preparation code:

<script src='https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash@4.17.15/lodash.min.js'></script>

Script Preparation code:

var strNum = '123';

Tests:

Native
Number(strNum)
Lodash
_.toNumber(strNum)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Native
Lodash

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/142.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 142 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Native	210010096.0 Ops/sec
Lodash	21133864.0 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 benchmark and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark is testing two different approaches to convert a string representation of a number to a native JavaScript number:

1. **Native**: This approach uses the built-in `Number()` function in JavaScript, which attempts to parse the string as a decimal number.
2. **Lodash**: This approach uses the `_toNumber()` function from the Lodash library, a popular utility library for functional programming.

**Options Compared**

The two approaches are compared on the same input:

* `strNum`: A string representation of a number, in this case `'123'`.

**Pros and Cons**

**Native Approach**

Pros:

* Fast: The built-in `Number()` function is generally very fast, as it's implemented in native code.
* Simple: No additional library dependencies are required.

Cons:

* Error Handling: If the input string is not a valid decimal number, `Number()` will return `NaN` (Not a Number), which can lead to unexpected behavior.
* Limited Support: Not all JavaScript engines support decimal numbers, and some may have different parsing rules.

**Lodash Approach**

Pros:

* Robust Error Handling: `_toNumber()` returns `NaN` if the input string is not a valid decimal number, but also provides additional error handling options.
* Cross-Engine Support: Lodash's `_toNumber()` function is designed to work with various JavaScript engines and dialects.

Cons:

* Slower: The overhead of loading an external library like Lodash can slow down the benchmark.
* Additional Dependency: Requires including the Lodash library in the test environment.

**Other Considerations**

The test also provides information about the browser, device platform, operating system, and number of executions per second. These metrics can help analyze the performance differences between the two approaches across different environments.

**Special JavaScript Features/Syntax**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntax mentioned in the benchmark definition that require specific handling.

**Library (Lodash)**

Lodash is a utility library for functional programming in JavaScript. The `_toNumber()` function from Lodash converts a value to a number, handling various edge cases and providing robust error handling.

In this benchmark, Lodash's `_toNumber()` function is used to test its performance compared to the native `Number()` function.

**Alternatives**

Other alternatives for converting string representations of numbers include:

* Using a custom implementation in JavaScript, without relying on built-in functions or libraries.
* Utilizing other libraries or frameworks that provide similar functionality, such as Moment.js for date and number parsing.

Related benchmarks:

Native Number vs Lodash toNumber (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Native vs Lodash

Created: 6 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

Native

Lodash

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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