Benchmark: Cost of try/catch without throwing

Script Preparation code:

function fn(x) {
	return x
}

function tryCatch(x) {
	try {
	  return fn(x)
	}
	catch (e) {
		return e
	}
}

function noTryCatch(x) {
	return fn(x)
}

Tests:

with try catch
tryCatch(5)
without try catch
noTryCatch(5)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
with try catch
without try catch

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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/115.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 115 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
with try catch	2677387.5 Ops/sec
without try catch	2300794.5 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one month ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided benchmark and its test cases.

**Benchmark Definition**

The `Script Preparation Code` section defines two functions: `fn(x)` and `tryCatch(x)`, as well as an alternative implementation `noTryCatch(x)`. These functions are used to measure the performance of try-catch blocks in JavaScript.

* `fn(x)` is a simple function that returns its input `x`.
* `tryCatch(x)` attempts to execute `fn(x)` within a try block. If any error occurs, it catches the exception and returns it.
* `noTryCatch(x)` bypasses the try-catch block by directly returning the result of `fn(x)`.

**Options Compared**

The two options being compared are:

1. **tryCatch**: Uses a try-catch block to handle potential exceptions thrown by the `fn(x)` function.
2. **noTryCatch**: Does not use a try-catch block and instead returns immediately after calling `fn(x)`.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

* **tryCatch**:
	+ Pros: Can handle runtime errors, provides more control over error handling.
	+ Cons: Incurs overhead due to the exception handling mechanism.
* **noTryCatch**:
	+ Pros: Eliminates overhead associated with try-catch blocks, potentially faster execution.
	+ Cons: Fails silently if `fn(x)` throws an unhandled error.

**Other Considerations**

* Both implementations rely on the behavior of JavaScript's built-in exception handling mechanism. If the exception is not caught, it will propagate up the call stack and terminate the program.
* The benchmark does not account for other factors that might affect performance, such as variable types or data sizes.

**Library Usage (if applicable)**

There are no libraries explicitly mentioned in the provided code.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax (if applicable)**

None of the special features or syntaxes were used in this benchmark. It solely focuses on measuring the performance difference between two implementation approaches.

Now, let's analyze the individual test cases:

1. **with try catch**: This test case executes the `tryCatch(5)` function and measures its execution time.
2. **without try catch**: This test case executes the `noTryCatch(5)` function and measures its execution time.

Both tests are designed to isolate the performance impact of using a try-catch block in JavaScript.

**Alternatives**

Other alternatives for measuring try-catch performance might include:

* Using a different error handling mechanism, such as async/await or promises.
* Comparing the performance of try-catch blocks with different levels of exception handling (e.g., catching specific errors vs. all exceptions).
* Examining the performance impact of different try-catch block configurations, such as using `try`-`catch`-`finally` blocks.

Keep in mind that this benchmark is focused on measuring the overhead of try-catch blocks and might not be representative of real-world scenarios where error handling is critical.

Related benchmarks:

Cost of try/catch without throwing (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: with try catch vs without try catch

Created: one year ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

with try catch

without try catch

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one month ago):