Benchmark: Nullish coalescing vs logical OR operators

Script Preparation code:

var nullValue = null;
var undefinedValue;
var trueValue = true;

Tests:

Nullish coalescing
nullValue ?? undefinedValue ?? trueValue
Logical OR
nullValue || undefinedValue || trueValue

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Nullish coalescing
Logical OR

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 8 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 OPR/120.0.0.0 (Edition Yx 05)

Browser/OS: Opera 120 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Nullish coalescing	230605840.0 Ops/sec
Logical OR	244837184.0 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 benchmark and explain what's being tested.

**What is being tested?**

The benchmark measures the performance difference between two different approaches to handle `null` or `undefined` values:

1. **Nullish coalescing**: This syntax, introduced in ECMAScript 2020, allows for a more concise way to specify a default value when dealing with `null` or `undefined`. It's denoted by three consecutive question marks (`??`) followed by the desired default value.
2. **Logical OR operators**: This approach uses the pipe (`|`) operator, which is commonly used in programming languages like C and Python.

**Options comparison**

The benchmark compares these two approaches to see which one is faster:

Pros of Nullish coalescing:

* More concise syntax
* Can be more readable, especially for developers familiar with this syntax

Cons of Nullish coalescing:

* May not be supported in older browsers or environments
* Requires ECMAScript 2020 support

Pros of Logical OR operators:

* Widely supported across different browsers and environments
* Easy to understand and implement, even for developers new to the concept

Cons of Logical OR operators:

* More verbose syntax compared to Nullish coalescing

**Library and special JavaScript feature**

There are no libraries mentioned in this benchmark. However, note that ECMAScript 2020 features like nullish coalescing were introduced as a standard, which means they're now widely supported across modern browsers.

**Special JS feature or syntax**

The benchmark uses the new nullish coalescing syntax (`??`). If you're not familiar with this syntax, it's similar to the ternary operator in C-like languages:

```javascript
x ?? y; // equivalent to x || (x === undefined ? y : x)
```

This syntax is supported in modern JavaScript engines and browsers.

**Alternatives**

Other approaches to handling `null` or `undefined` values include:

* Using a separate function to handle null/undefined values: `const value = getValue(); const result = value !== undefined ? value : defaultValue;`
* Using a conditional statement: `if (value === null || value === undefined) { return defaultValue; } else { return value; }`
* Using the optional chaining operator (`?.`): `const result = object?.prop ?? defaultValue;`

These alternatives are more verbose and may not be as efficient as Nullish coalescing, but they're still valid ways to handle null/undefined values in JavaScript.

Related benchmarks:

Nullish coalescing vs logical OR operators (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Nullish coalescing vs Logical OR

Created: 5 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Nullish coalescing

Logical OR

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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