Benchmark: For Loop vs While Loop vs indexOf

Script Preparation code:

var arr = ['apple', 'banana', 'cherry', 'donuts', 'eggplant', 'french fries', 'goulash', 'hamburger', 'ice cream', 'juice', 'kebab', 'lemonade', 'mango', 'nuts', 'octopus', 'parsley', 'quail egg', 'risotto', 'stew', 'tapas', 'udon', 'vanilla', 'wheat', 'xylotil', 'yogurt', 'zucchinni'];

function forLoop(array, item) {
	for (var i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
    	if (array[i] === item) {
          return i;
        }
    }
    return -1;
}

function whileLoop(array, item) {
  	var i = 0;
	while (i < array.length) {
    	if (array[i] === item) {
        	return i;
        }
      	i += 1;
    }
    return -1;
}

function indexOfNative(array, item) {
	return array.indexOf(item);
}

Tests:

For Loop for item towards beginning
forLoop(arr, 'donuts')
While Loop for item towards beginning
whileLoop(arr, 'donuts')
indexOf for item towards beginning
indexOfNative(arr, 'donuts')
For Loop for item towards end
forLoop(arr, 'yogurt')
While Loop for item towards end
whileLoop(arr, 'yogurt')
indexOf for item towards end
indexOfNative(arr, 'yogurt')

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 50 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 39 runs

indexOf for item towards beginning

13.2M/s

For Loop for item towards beginning

12.4M/s

While Loop for item towards beginning

12.4M/s

indexOf for item towards end

10.9M/s

For Loop for item towards end

10.1M/s

While Loop for item towards end

10.1M/s

Fastest: indexOf for item towards beginning (1.3x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ indexOf for item towards beginning: 13,200,041 ops/sec
• For Loop for item towards beginning: 12,423,714 ops/sec
• While Loop for item towards beginning: 12,379,576 ops/sec
• indexOf for item towards end: 10,855,345 ops/sec
• For Loop for item towards end: 10,094,810 ops/sec
• While Loop for item towards end: 10,074,529 ops/sec

Firefox 11 runs

For Loop for item towards beginning

136.3M/s

While Loop for item towards beginning

134.3M/s

indexOf for item towards beginning

57.3M/s

indexOf for item towards end

30.2M/s

While Loop for item towards end

27.0M/s

For Loop for item towards end

26.9M/s

Fastest: For Loop for item towards beginning (5.1x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ For Loop for item towards beginning: 136,293,536 ops/sec
• While Loop for item towards beginning: 134,301,232 ops/sec
• indexOf for item towards beginning: 57,306,888 ops/sec
• indexOf for item towards end: 30,173,230 ops/sec
• While Loop for item towards end: 26,967,514 ops/sec
• For Loop for item towards end: 26,936,256 ops/sec

Results show median performance across all community submissions. Run this benchmark yourself to verify on your device.

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
For Loop for item towards beginning
While Loop for item towards beginning
indexOf for item towards beginning
For Loop for item towards end
While Loop for item towards end
indexOf for item towards end

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/136.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 136 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

While Loop for item towards beginning

55.5M/s

For Loop for item towards beginning

54.7M/s

indexOf for item towards beginning

54.0M/s

For Loop for item towards end

24.1M/s

While Loop for item towards end

23.5M/s

indexOf for item towards end

21.2M/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ While Loop for item towards beginning	55,478,824 Ops/sec
For Loop for item towards beginning	54,739,096 Ops/sec
indexOf for item towards beginning	54,016,824 Ops/sec
For Loop for item towards end	24,149,878 Ops/sec
While Loop for item towards end	23,525,318 Ops/sec
indexOf for item towards end	21,196,950 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 definition and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark defines three functions:

1. `forLoop(array, item)`: A traditional `for` loop that iterates through an array and returns the index of the first occurrence of a specified item.
2. `whileLoop(array, item)`: A `while` loop that iterates through an array and returns the index of the first occurrence of a specified item.
3. `indexOfNative(array, item)`: A native JavaScript function `Array.indexOf()` that returns the index of the first occurrence of a specified item in the given array.

**Options Compared**

The benchmark compares the performance of these three functions under two different scenarios:

* **Item towards beginning**: The test case searches for an item near the start of the array.
* **Item towards end**: The test case searches for an item near the end of the array.

**Pros and Cons**

Here's a brief analysis of each approach:

1. `forLoop(array, item)`:
	* Pros: Simple, easy to understand, and might be faster for small arrays.
	* Cons: Can be slower for large arrays due to the overhead of incrementing the loop counter.
2. `whileLoop(array, item)`:
	* Pros: Might be faster for large arrays since it only increments the index variable when necessary.
	* Cons: More complex than a simple `for` loop and might have additional overhead due to the loop condition.
3. `indexOfNative(array, item)`:
	* Pros: Native implementation with built-in performance optimization.
	* Cons: May not be available in older browsers or environments.

**Library**

The benchmark uses no external libraries besides the standard JavaScript arrays. However, it's worth noting that modern browsers have optimized implementations of `Array.indexOf()` under the hood, which might affect the results.

**Special JS Feature/Syntax**

None mentioned, as this benchmark focuses on a straightforward implementation of loops and indexing.

**Alternatives**

If you're interested in exploring alternative approaches or optimizing these functions further:

* Consider using more advanced data structures like binary search trees (BSTs) or hash tables for faster lookup times.
* Explore using specialized libraries or frameworks that provide optimized implementations for array operations, such as NumJS or Arrayify.
* Investigate using parallel processing techniques to take advantage of multi-core processors.

Keep in mind that the choice of implementation and optimization strategies depends on the specific use case and performance requirements.

For Loop vs While Loop vs indexOf (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: `For Loop for item towards beginning vs While Loop for item towards beginning vs indexOf for item towards beginning vs For Loop for item towards end vs While Loop for item towards end vs indexOf for item towards end`

Created: 5 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

For Loop for item towards beginning

While Loop for item towards beginning

indexOf for item towards beginning

For Loop for item towards end

While Loop for item towards end

indexOf for item towards end

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 50 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 39 runs

Firefox 11 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

For Loop vs While Loop vs indexOf (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: For Loop for item towards beginning vs While Loop for item towards beginning vs indexOf for item towards beginning vs For Loop for item towards end vs While Loop for item towards end vs indexOf for item towards end

Created: 5 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

For Loop for item towards beginning

While Loop for item towards beginning

indexOf for item towards beginning

For Loop for item towards end

While Loop for item towards end

indexOf for item towards end

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 50 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 39 runs

Firefox 11 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

Related benchmarks

Comparing performance of: `For Loop for item towards beginning vs While Loop for item towards beginning vs indexOf for item towards beginning vs For Loop for item towards end vs While Loop for item towards end vs indexOf for item towards end`