Benchmark: json stringify vs array join

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:

join
makeTestData().join('-')
JSON.stringify
JSON.stringify(makeTestData());

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
join
JSON.stringify

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided JSON data and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Definition**
The benchmark is defined by two scripts: `moreData` and `makeTestData`. The purpose of these scripts is to generate test data for the benchmark.

- `moreData(arr, left)` recursively pushes random numbers onto an array until it reaches a specified depth (left). 
- `makeTestData()` calls `moreData([], 4)`, effectively generating an array with 4 random elements.

**Options Being Compared**
The two options being compared are:

1. Using the `join` method on the generated array.
2. Using the `JSON.stringify` function to convert the array into a JSON string and then using the `-` character as a separator for concatenation.

**Pros and Cons of Different Approaches**

### Join Method

- **Pros:**
  - Generally faster than `JSON.stringify`, especially for large arrays, since it doesn't require the overhead of encoding each element.
  - Suitable when dealing with text data that needs to be concatenated (like file paths or URLs).
- **Cons:**
  - It's not suitable for converting data into a format like JSON for data exchange or storage because it does not produce a valid JSON string, and also may not handle all types of JavaScript objects correctly.
  - In this benchmark, the `join` method seems to perform better in terms of raw execution speed.

### JSON.stringify

- **Pros:**
  - Produces a valid JSON string that can be used for data exchange or storage.
  - Handles a wide range of JavaScript objects and arrays by converting them into key-value pairs that conform to the standard JSON format.
  - Suitable when working with legacy codebases that rely on this method, or in modern development where handling JSON data is common.
- **Cons:**
  - Generally slower than the `join` method due to additional overhead from encoding each element and creating a new string.
  - May not perform well for very large arrays because of these additional operations.

**Library Usage**

In the provided benchmark, there's no explicit library usage, but we can infer that JavaScript's built-in functions are being used: `Array.prototype.join()` and `JSON.stringify()`. Both are part of the JavaScript standard library.

**Special JS Features/Syntax (No Special Mention Here)**

There is a recursive function `moreData` in the script preparation code. While this might be unfamiliar to some, it's a basic concept in programming where a function calls itself until a base case condition is met. In this case, it generates an array by pushing numbers onto it recursively.

**Other Alternatives**

For converting arrays into strings, especially if you're dealing with text data or when performance matters (like in the `join` method compared to `JSON.stringify`), consider using other methods:

- String concatenation (`+`) followed by a separator.
- Using an array map function along with a string template engine.

For handling JSON data, consider working with libraries like Lodash or jQuery if you need more advanced features. However, for basic JSON operations like converting JavaScript objects to strings (using `JSON.stringify`), built-in JavaScript functions are suitable and efficient enough.

In summary, the benchmark tests the performance of joining an array using the `join()` method versus stringifying an array using `JSON.stringify()`, comparing which is faster for generating a specific type of data.

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 13 hours ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 OPR/106.0.0.0

Browser/OS: Opera 106 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
join	1819982.5 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify	1386132.9 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

json stringify vs array join (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: join vs JSON.stringify

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

join

JSON.stringify

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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