Benchmark: lodash isNil vs == null

HTML Preparation code:

<script src='https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.5/lodash.min.js'></script>

Script Preparation code:

var a = null;
var b = undefined;
var c = NaN;
var d = false;
var e = 'a';
var f = 0;

Tests:

lodash isNil
_.isNil(a); _.isNil(b); _.isNil(c); _.isNil(d); _.isNil(e); _.isNil(f);
native isNil
a == null b == null c == null d == null e == null f == null

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
lodash isNil
native isNil

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 2 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
lodash isNil	39276408.0 Ops/sec
native isNil	159447680.0 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 JSON data and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark definition is a set of instructions that define how to run the test. In this case, there are two test cases:

1. `lodash isNil`: This test case uses the Lodash library to check if values are null or undefined using the `_.isNil` function.
2. `native isNil`: This test case checks if values are null or undefined using the native JavaScript `== null` syntax.

**Options being compared**

The two options being compared are:

1. Using Lodash's `_.isNil` function to check for nullity.
2. Using the native JavaScript `== null` syntax to check for nullity.

**Pros and cons of each approach**

Using Lodash's `_.isNil` function has some advantages:

* It provides a more explicit and type-safe way to check for nullity, which can help catch errors earlier in development.
* It is likely to be implemented in a way that is optimized for performance.
* However, it requires importing the Lodash library, which may add overhead.

Using the native JavaScript `== null` syntax has some advantages:

* It does not require importing any additional libraries, which can reduce overhead.
* It is often faster and more lightweight than using a library.
* However, it can be less explicit and type-safe, which can lead to errors.

**Library: Lodash**

Lodash is a popular JavaScript utility library that provides a wide range of functions for tasks such as string manipulation, array processing, and object manipulation. In this benchmark, the `_.isNil` function is used to check if values are null or undefined.

The `_.isNil` function takes a single argument and returns a boolean value indicating whether the value is null or undefined. It uses a combination of the native JavaScript `typeof` operator and the `===` operator to perform the comparison.

**Special JS feature: Nullish Coalescing Operator**

In newer versions of JavaScript (starting from ECMAScript 2020), a new operator called the "Nullish Coalescing Operator" (`??`) was introduced. This operator allows you to provide a default value if the expression on the left-hand side is null or undefined.

While this feature is not used in this benchmark, it's worth noting that it provides an alternative way to check for nullity using a more concise and expressive syntax.

**Other alternatives**

If you need to compare performance of different ways to check for nullity in JavaScript, here are some other options:

* Using the `instanceof` operator: `instanceof Object` can be used to check if a value is an object (including null).
* Using the `typeof` operator with a type guard: `typeof value === 'object' && value !== null` can be used to check if a value is an object that is not null.
* Implementing your own custom function for checking nullity, such as using a simple equality check or a more complex implementation.

However, it's worth noting that the native JavaScript `== null` syntax and Lodash's `_.isNil` function are likely to be implemented in optimized ways that take into account the specific characteristics of JavaScript and its ecosystem.

Related benchmarks:

lodash isNil vs == null (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: lodash isNil vs native isNil

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

lodash isNil

native isNil

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):