Run results for: array math.max (3 variants) vs for loop (5 variants)

compare finding the maximum value with Math.max using .apply & using the spread (...) operator, vs a basic for loop with an if statement, a basic foor loop using length caching, a reversed iterate basic loop, a for-of loop, & finally a a Math.max.apply helper function.

Go to the benchmark

Run details:

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/129.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser: Chrome 129

Operating system: Windows

Device Platform: Desktop

Date tested: one year ago

Test name	Executions per second
✓ Math.max.apply extracted into separate function	397,742 Ops/sec
Math.max.apply	368,202 Ops/sec
Math.max with spread	71,027 Ops/sec
for-of loop	6,494 Ops/sec
for loop length caching	3,572 Ops/sec
for loop reverse	3,448 Ops/sec
for loop length caching extracted into separate function	3,381 Ops/sec
basic for loop	2,330 Ops/sec

Test name

Executions per second

✓ Math.max.apply extracted into separate function

397,742 Ops/sec

Math.max.apply

368,202 Ops/sec

Math.max with spread

71,027 Ops/sec

for-of loop

6,494 Ops/sec

for loop length caching

3,572 Ops/sec

for loop reverse

3,448 Ops/sec

for loop length caching extracted into separate function

3,381 Ops/sec

basic for loop

2,330 Ops/sec

Script Preparation code:

var arr = [];
var max = -Infinity;
for (i = 0; i < 4096; i++) { 
  arr.push(Math.random() * i);
}

function mathMax (array) {
	return Math.max.apply(Math, array);
}

function forLoop (array) {
	for (let i = 0, len = arr.length; i < len; i++) {
  		if (arr[i] > max) {
    		max = arr[i];
  		}
	}
}

Tests:

Math.max.apply
max = Math.max.apply(Math, arr);
Math.max with spread
max = Math.max(...arr);
basic for loop
for (let i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) { if (arr[i] > max) { max = arr[i]; } }
for loop length caching
for (let i = 0, len = arr.length; i < len; i++) { if (arr[i] > max) { max = arr[i]; } }
for loop reverse
for (let i = arr.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) { if (arr[i] > max) { max = arr[i]; } }
for-of loop
for (const value of arr) { if (value > max) { max = value; } }
Math.max.apply extracted into separate function
max = mathMax(arr)
for loop length caching extracted into separate function
max = forLoop(arr)