Benchmark: toString vs string template literal vs String()

Tests:

toString
for (let i = 0; i <= 10000; i++) { const number = i; const stringFromNumber = number.toString(); }
Template literal
for (let i = 0; i <= 10000; i++) { const number = i; const stringFromNumber = `${number}`; }
String()
for (let i = 0; i <= 10000; i++) { const number = i; const stringFromNumber = String(number); }

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
toString
Template literal
String()

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 25 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

I'd be happy to explain the provided benchmark and its results.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark is designed to test three different approaches for converting an integer number to a string:

1. `toString()`: The built-in `toString()` method, which converts a value to a string using its internal implementation.
2. String template literal (`"${number}"`): A feature introduced in ECMAScript 2015 (ES6), which allows embedding expressions inside double quotes to create a string.
3. `String(number)`: The `String()` function, which is an alias for the `toString()` method.

**Options Comparison**

The three approaches have different pros and cons:

* **`toString()`**: This approach uses the built-in implementation of string conversion. It's likely to be the fastest, as it's implemented in native code. However, its performance may vary depending on the specific use case (e.g., padding, formatting).
* **String template literal (`"${number}"`)**: This approach is more expressive and flexible than the other two. It allows for easy concatenation and formatting of strings. However, it might be slower than `toString()` due to the additional overhead of parsing the template literal.
* **`String(number)`**: This approach is essentially identical to `toString()`, as both are aliases for the same method. It's likely to have similar performance characteristics.

**Other Considerations**

When choosing an approach, consider the following factors:

* Performance: If speed is critical, `toString()` might be the best choice.
* Expressiveness: If you need to create complex strings with formatting and concatenation, the string template literal might be a better option.
* Consistency: If you're working with legacy code or older browsers, using `String(number)` or `toString()` might be more compatible.

**Library and Special JS Features**

There are no libraries used in this benchmark. However, the use of string template literals is a special JavaScript feature introduced in ECMAScript 2015 (ES6). If you're targeting older browsers or environments without ES6 support, you may need to use one of the other approaches.

**Benchmark Preparation Code and Results**

The provided benchmark preparation code consists of three identical loops that create an integer array and convert each number to a string using one of the three approaches. The results show the executions per second for each approach on a Chrome 111 browser running on Windows.

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/111.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 111 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
toString	9903.9 Ops/sec
Template literal	233266.2 Ops/sec
String()	545.7 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

toString vs string template literal vs String() (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: toString vs Template literal vs String()

Created: 2 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

toString

Template literal

String()

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 25 days ago):