Benchmark: RegEx.test vs RegEx.match when fails

Script Preparation code:

var string = "Bye world!";
var regex = /Hello/;

Tests:

test()
regex.test(string);
match()
string.match("Hello");

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
test()
match()

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/105.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 105 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
test()	3223629.0 Ops/sec
match()	2006691.4 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 benchmark and explain what's being tested.

**What is being tested?**

The benchmark measures the performance difference between two approaches: `regex.test()` and `string.match()`. Both methods are used to search for a specific pattern ("Hello") in a given string ("Bye world!").

**Options compared**

Two options are being compared:

1. **`regex.test()`**: This method tests whether the entire input string matches the regular expression pattern. It returns `true` if there's a match, and `false` otherwise.
2. **`string.match()`: This method searches for the first occurrence of the regular expression pattern in the string and returns an array containing the matched text.

**Pros and cons**

Here are some pros and cons of each approach:

* **`regex.test()`**:
	+ Pros:
		- More flexible, as it allows searching for a full match or an partial match.
		- Can be more efficient if only one possible match exists.
	+ Cons:
		- May lead to slower performance if the regular expression is complex or if multiple matches exist.
* **`string.match()`**:
	+ Pros:
		- Faster and more efficient when only a single match is expected.
		- Can be more readable, as it clearly indicates which part of the string was matched.
	+ Cons:
		- May lead to slower performance if multiple matches exist or if the regular expression is complex.
		- Returns an array with a single element (the matched text), whereas `regex.test()` returns a boolean value.

**Library and its purpose**

In this benchmark, there's no specific library being tested. However, it's worth noting that both methods rely on the JavaScript Engine and its support for regular expressions.

**Special JS feature or syntax**

There are no special features or syntaxes mentioned in the provided code. The benchmark is focused on comparing two well-established methods for searching patterns in strings.

**Other alternatives**

If you need to search for patterns in strings, some other alternatives include:

* **`String.prototype.indexOf()`**: A more straightforward method that returns the index of the first occurrence of a substring, or -1 if not found.
* **`RegExp.prototype.exec()`**: Similar to `string.match()`, but allows searching multiple times without creating a new regular expression object.

Keep in mind that these alternatives may have slightly different performance characteristics and trade-offs depending on the specific use case.

Related benchmarks:

RegEx.test vs RegEx.match when fails (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: test() vs match()

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

test()

match()

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):