Benchmark: try/catch vs check

Script Preparation code:

function log() {
  var str = "";
  for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; ++i) {
    str += String(arguments[i]);
  }
}

var resA;
function doTry (e) {
  try {
    resA = e.details[0];
  } catch (err) {
    log("unexpected format of event:", err.toString());
  }
}

var resB;
function doCheck (e) {
  if (e && e.details) {
    resB = e.details[0];
  } else {
    log("unexpected format of event:", e);
  }
}

var goodEvents = [];
for (var i = 0; i < 10000; ++i) {
  goodEvents.push({ details: [ Math.random() ] });
}

var badEvents = [];
for (var i = 0; i < 10000; ++i) {
  if (i % 20 === 0) {
    badEvents.push(null);
  } else if (i % 20 === 10) {
    badEvents.push({});
  } else {
  	badEvents.push({ details: [ Math.random() ] });
  }
}

function test (events, fn) {
  for (var i = 0; i < events.length; ++i) {
    fn(events[i]);
  }
}

Tests:

try
test(goodEvents, doTry);
check
test(goodEvents, doCheck);
try (bad)
test(badEvents, doTry);
check (bad)
test(badEvents, doCheck);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
try
check
try (bad)
check (bad)

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 26 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into the provided benchmark.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark measures the performance difference between two approaches to handling event data: `try/catch` and explicit checks (`if-else` statement).

The script preparation code defines two functions, `doTry` and `doCheck`, which take an event object as input. The `goodEvents` and `badEvents` arrays are used to simulate valid and invalid event data.

**Options Compared**

There are four test cases:

1. **try**: This test case uses the `try/catch` approach with `doTry`.
2. **check**: This test case uses explicit checks (`if-else`) with `doCheck`.
3. **try (bad)**: This test case uses the `try/catch` approach but simulates invalid event data in `badEvents`.
4. **check (bad)**: This test case uses explicit checks (`if-else`) but simulates invalid event data in `badEvents`.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

1. **try/catch**:
	* Pros:
		+ Can handle unexpected errors more elegantly.
		+ Reduces boilerplate code.
	* Cons:
		+ May incur performance overhead due to exception handling.
		+ Can lead to slower execution if not optimized properly.
2. **explicit checks** (`if-else`):
	* Pros:
		+ More predictable and controlled error handling.
		+ Can be more efficient than `try/catch` for simple cases.
	* Cons:
		+ Requires explicit checks for every possible condition.
		+ May lead to longer code and increased maintenance complexity.

**Library Usage**

The benchmark uses the `log` function, which is not a built-in JavaScript library. Instead, it appears to be a custom logging utility defined in the script preparation code. Its purpose is to print error messages or logs.

**Special JS Features/Syntax**

This benchmark does not explicitly use any special JavaScript features or syntax that would require specific handling or optimization.

**Other Considerations**

1. **Event Handling**: The benchmark simulates event data using arrays of objects, which may not accurately represent real-world event handling scenarios.
2. **Browser Variability**: The benchmark runs on multiple browsers (Chrome 124) and devices (Desktop), which can introduce variability in results due to differences in browser implementations and execution environments.

**Alternatives**

Other approaches to handling event data could include:

1. **Type guards**: Using type guards or other static analysis techniques to ensure event data is correctly formatted.
2. **Validation libraries**: Utilizing validation libraries like Joi or Yup to validate event data before processing it.
3. **Optimized error handling**: Implementing optimized error handling mechanisms, such as using `try`-`catch` blocks with specific error types or using error handling middleware.

Keep in mind that the choice of approach depends on the specific requirements and constraints of your application.

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 5 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/124.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 124 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
try	1162.6 Ops/sec
check	1104.8 Ops/sec
try (bad)	104.3 Ops/sec
check (bad)	887.0 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

try/catch vs check (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: try vs check vs try (bad) vs check (bad)

Created: 7 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

try

check

try (bad)

check (bad)

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 26 days ago):