Benchmark: RegEx.test vs String.search

Script Preparation code:

var REGEX = /abcdef/

Tests:

RegEx.test()
REGEX.test('This is a sample text that should work.')
String.search()
'This is a sample text that should work.'.search(REGEX)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
RegEx.test()
String.search()

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/130.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome Mobile 130 on Android

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
RegEx.test()	12494759.0 Ops/sec
String.search()	11495981.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

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

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark measures the performance difference between two approaches: using the `test()` method on a regular expression object (`REGEX.test()`) versus using the `search()` method on a string (`'This is a sample text that should work.'.search(REGEX)`).

**Options Compared**

Two options are being compared:

1. **Regular Expression Object's `test()` Method**
2. **String's `search()` Method**

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

**Regular Expression Object's `test()` Method:**

Pros:

* Can be more efficient for certain types of regex patterns, especially those with lookaheads or lookbehinds.
* Can return a boolean value immediately if the pattern is found at the beginning of the string.

Cons:

* May not be as widely supported across browsers and JavaScript engines.
* Can be slower than the `search()` method for very large strings due to the overhead of creating a regex object.

**String's `search()` Method:**

Pros:

* Widely supported across browsers and JavaScript engines.
* Can be faster than the `test()` method for very large strings, as it doesn't require creating a regex object.
* Returns an index value immediately if the pattern is found.

Cons:

* May not work correctly for certain types of regex patterns, especially those with lookaheads or lookbehinds.
* Can return -1 if no match is found, which might be considered an error in some cases.

**Library Used**

In this benchmark, a library-like object `REGEX` is used to encapsulate the regular expression pattern. This allows for easier reuse of the regex pattern across multiple test cases.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

There is no special JavaScript feature or syntax being tested in this benchmark. The focus is on the performance difference between two different approaches to matching a string against a regular expression.

**Other Alternatives**

If you're interested in exploring alternative approaches, you might consider:

* Using the `RegExp` constructor directly: `new RegExp('abcdef', 'g')`
* Using the `String.prototype.match()` method: `'This is a sample text that should work.'.match(/abcdef/g)`
* Using a library like RegExlib or regex-escape to optimize regex performance

Keep in mind that each alternative has its own trade-offs and might not be suitable for all use cases.

Related benchmarks:

RegEx.test vs String.search (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: RegEx.test() vs String.search()

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

RegEx.test()

String.search()

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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