Benchmark: Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify() Equality Comparison

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash@4.17.4/lodash.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

window.foo = {sys: 'cool', test1: {tick: 'tock', tock: false}, test2: 2};
window.bar = {sys: 'cool', test1: {tick: 'tock', tock: false}, test2: 2};

Tests:

_.isEqual
_.isEqual(window.foo, window.bar)
JSON.stringify
JSON.stringify(window.foo) === JSON.stringify(window.bar);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
_.isEqual
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 benchmark and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark compares the performance of two equality checks: one using Lodash's `isEqual` function and another using the `===` operator with `JSON.stringify`.

**Options Compared**

There are two main options being compared:

1. **Lodash's `isEqual` function**: This is a custom implementation that recursively checks if two objects are equal, considering their properties and values.
2. **`JSON.stringify()` equality check**: This uses the `===` operator to compare the results of `JSON.stringify()` applied to both objects.

**Pros and Cons**

* **Lodash's `isEqual` function**:
	+ Pros: Customizable, can handle complex data structures (e.g., nested arrays, objects), and is often more efficient than using JavaScript's built-in equality checks.
	+ Cons: May be slower due to its custom implementation, and requires Lodash library inclusion.
* **`JSON.stringify()` equality check**:
	+ Pros: Simple, fast, and doesn't require any external libraries. It's also widely supported by most browsers.
	+ Cons: Can be less efficient than `isEqual` for complex data structures, as it creates a string representation of the objects.

**Other Considerations**

* **DevicePlatform**: The benchmark is run on a Macintosh (Desktop) with Chrome 112, which may limit its applicability to other devices and browsers.
* **OperatingSystem**: The test is executed on Mac OS X 10.15.7, which might affect performance due to the system's architecture or hardware.

**Library Used: Lodash**

Lodash is a popular JavaScript library that provides various utility functions for tasks like array manipulation, object iteration, and more. In this case, it's used for the `isEqual` function, which performs an equality check between two objects.

**Special JS Feature/Syntax**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntax mentioned in the benchmark, as it focuses on comparing two simple equality checks.

Now that we've broken down the benchmark, let's look at some alternative approaches:

* **Alternative equality checks**: Other libraries like Underscore.js or Ramda provide similar functionality to Lodash's `isEqual` function.
* **Built-in JavaScript equality checks**: The `===` operator with a custom comparison function using `JSON.stringify()` could be used instead of Lodash's `isEqual`.
* **TypeScript/Flow**: If the code is written in TypeScript or Flow, type annotations and type inference can simplify the comparison process.

Please note that these alternatives might not be directly comparable to the original benchmark, as they might have different performance characteristics or feature sets.

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 112 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
_.isEqual	592924.4 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify	733522.4 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify() Equality Comparison (version: 0)

Test on isEqual performance

Comparing performance of: _.isEqual vs JSON.stringify

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

_.isEqual

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):