Benchmark: Array.prototype.sort (utc date property vs epoch date simulation property)

Script Preparation code:

function randomDateUtc(start, end) {
    return new Date(start.getTime() + Math.random() * (end.getTime() - start.getTime()));
}

var arrUtc = [];
for(var i = 0; i < 100000; i++){
  arrUtc.push({value:randomDateUtc(new Date(2012, 0, 1), new Date())});
}

function randomDateEpochSimulation(max) {
    return Math.floor(Math.random() * Math.floor(max));
}

var arrEpoch = [];
for(var i = 0; i < 100000; i++){
  arrEpoch.push({value:randomDateEpochSimulation(Date.now())});
}

Tests:

UTC date property inside objects
arrUtc.sort((a,b) => a.value - b.value);
Epoch date property inside objects
arrEpoch.sort((a,b) => a.value - b.value);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
UTC date property inside objects
Epoch date property inside objects

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 28 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the benchmark definition and test cases.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark is testing the performance of `Array.prototype.sort()` on two different approaches:

1. **Sorting by UTC date property**: The script generates an array of objects with a random UTC date value using the `randomDateUtc` function, which simulates a UTC date by adding a random offset to a fixed start date (January 1, 2012). This approach assumes that the UTC date values are stored as strings or numbers in the format of Unix timestamps.
2. **Sorting by epoch date property**: The script generates an array of objects with a random epoch date value using the `randomDateEpochSimulation` function, which simulates an epoch date by generating a random number between 0 and the current timestamp (in seconds). This approach assumes that the epoch date values are stored as numbers.

**Options Compared**

The benchmark is comparing the performance of two approaches:

* **UTC date property**: sorting on strings or numbers representing UTC dates
* **Epoch date property**: sorting on numbers representing epoch dates

**Pros and Cons**

* **Sorting by UTC date property**:
	+ Pros: This approach assumes that the UTC date values are stored as strings or numbers in a standard format, which might be more intuitive for developers familiar with datetime libraries.
	+ Cons: If the actual data is stored in a different format (e.g., ISO strings), this approach may not work correctly. Additionally, this approach can be slower than sorting by epoch dates if the range of possible values is large.
* **Sorting by epoch date property**:
	+ Pros: This approach assumes that the epoch date values are stored as numbers, which might be more efficient for large ranges of values.
	+ Cons: If the actual data is stored in a different format (e.g., strings or objects), this approach may not work correctly. Additionally, this approach can lead to slower performance if the range of possible values is small.

**Library Used**

None are explicitly mentioned in the provided code. However, the `Date` object and its methods (like `getTime()`) are used throughout the script.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

The `randomDateUtc` function uses a trick to simulate a UTC date by adding a random offset to a fixed start date. This is not a standard JavaScript feature but rather a custom implementation for this benchmark.

**Other Alternatives**

If you wanted to modify or extend this benchmark, some alternatives could include:

* Using different sorting algorithms (e.g., merge sort, quicksort)
* Increasing the size of the input arrays
* Adding more test cases with different data formats (e.g., dates in different cultures)
* Comparing performance on different hardware platforms or architectures

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 3 years ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/89.0.4389.90 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 89 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
UTC date property inside objects	15.8 Ops/sec
Epoch date property inside objects	82.5 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

Array.prototype.sort (utc date property vs epoch date simulation property) (version: 1)

Comparing sort on utc date property inside object vs sort on epoch date property inside object

Comparing performance of: UTC date property inside objects vs Epoch date property inside objects

Created: 3 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

UTC date property inside objects

Epoch date property inside objects

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 28 days ago):