Benchmark: Symbol vs String property square bracket increment

Script Preparation code:

var foo = {};
var sym = Symbol("key");
var str = "key";

Tests:

Symbol
foo[sym] += 1;
String
foo[str] += 1;

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Symbol
String

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 24 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

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

**Benchmark Definition json**

The benchmark definition is a simple JSON object that describes two tests:

1. **Script Preparation Code**: This code snippet sets up the environment for the benchmark. It defines an empty object `foo`, creates a Symbol property `sym` with the key "key", and creates a string `str` with the same value as the symbol's key.
2. **Html Preparation Code**: This field is empty, which means there is no HTML setup required for this benchmark.

**Individual test cases**

There are two test cases:

1. **Test Case 1: Symbol**
The benchmark definition for this test case is `foo[sym] += 1;`. This code increments the value of the symbol property `sym` on the object `foo`.
2. **Test Case 2: String**
The benchmark definition for this test case is `foo[str] += 1;`. This code increments the value of the string property `str` on the object `foo`.

**Options being compared**

These two test cases are comparing the performance of accessing and incrementing a symbol property versus a string property on an object.

**Pros and Cons of each approach:**

**Symbol Property:**

Pros:

* Symbols have a unique namespace and are not prone to collisions with other variables.
* They can be used as property keys in objects, making them useful for creating fast and efficient data structures.

Cons:

* Symbols are only supported in modern browsers (ES6+).
* They require the `Symbol` function to create a new symbol.

**String Property:**

Pros:

* String properties are widely supported across all browsers.
* They can be used with string literals, which are commonly encountered in web development.

Cons:

* String properties are prone to collisions with other variable names.
* They may not perform as well as symbols for large datasets or complex data structures.

**Other considerations:**

* The use of a single object `foo` is repeated across both test cases. This could potentially introduce performance variability due to the overhead of creating and manipulating objects.
* The benchmark does not account for any potential garbage collection or optimization effects on modern browsers.

**Library/Tool usage:**

There is no explicit library or tool mentioned in the benchmark definition. However, some assumptions can be made:

* `Symbol` function is used to create a new symbol property.
* String literals are used as string properties.
* The `foo` object and its methods (e.g., `+=`) are assumed to be part of the browser's standard implementation.

**Special JS feature/syntax:**

No special JavaScript features or syntax are explicitly mentioned in this benchmark. However, it relies on the `Symbol` function, which was introduced in ECMAScript 2015 (ES6).

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.3 Safari/605.1.15

Browser/OS: Safari 16 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Symbol	16734518.0 Ops/sec
String	16694213.0 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

Symbol vs String property square bracket increment (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Symbol vs String

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Symbol

String

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 24 days ago):