Benchmark: JSON.stringify vs template-literals vs array tostring

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());
template-literals
(`${makeTestData()}`);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
toString
JSON.stringify
template-literals

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 25 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/134.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 134 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
toString	6534584.0 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify	8394936.0 Ops/sec
template-literals	5901881.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 6 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the benchmark and its options.

**Benchmark Definition JSON**

The benchmark is designed to compare three ways of converting an array to a string in JavaScript:

1. `JSON.stringify()`
2. Template literals (template strings)
3. `toString()` method on arrays

**Script Preparation Code**

The script preparation code generates a test data array by recursively pushing random numbers onto the array using the `moreData` function. The `makeTestData` function returns this generated array.

```javascript
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); }
```

**Html Preparation Code**

There is no HTML preparation code provided.

**Individual Test Cases**

The benchmark consists of three test cases:

1. `toString`: Converts the generated array to a string using the `toString()` method.
2. `JSON.stringify`: Converts the generated array to a JSON string using `JSON.stringify()`.
3. `template-literals`: Converts the generated array to a string using template literals (template strings).

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

1. **`toString()`**: This approach is simple and widely supported, but it can be slow for large arrays because it iterates over each element in the array.
2. **`JSON.stringify()`**: This approach is also straightforward but can be slower than `toString()`, especially for large arrays with nested objects or dates. It's also not suitable for all data types (e.g., binary data).
3. **Template literals**: Template literals are a relatively new feature in JavaScript that allows you to create strings using backticks (`) instead of single quotes. They can be faster than `toString()` for large arrays because they don't require iterating over each element.

**Library: Lodash**

The benchmark uses the `lodash` library, which is not explicitly mentioned in the JSON definition. However, upon closer inspection, we see that the `moreData` function uses `push` and `Math.random`, which are both part of the standard JavaScript API. But if you were to use a more complex data structure or require additional functions from Lodash, it would be beneficial.

**Special JS Feature/Syntax: Arrow Functions**

The benchmark uses arrow functions (e.g., `return moreData(arr, left - 1)`) which are a feature introduced in ECMAScript 2015. While not specific to the benchmark, understanding arrow functions is useful for working with modern JavaScript code.

**Alternatives**

If you wanted to modify or add to this benchmark, here are some alternatives:

* Use different data structures (e.g., objects, sets) instead of arrays.
* Experiment with different libraries (e.g., Moment.js for dates).
* Add more test cases (e.g., converting strings to numbers).
* Compare performance under different conditions (e.g., browser vs Node.js, small vs large arrays).

Related benchmarks:

JSON.stringify vs template-literals vs array tostring (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: toString vs JSON.stringify vs template-literals

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

toString

JSON.stringify

template-literals

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 6 months ago):