Benchmark: string-interpolation-vs-toString-vs-String

Script Preparation code:

var luckyNumber = Math.round(Math.random() * 100);

Tests:

string-interpolation
` ${luckyNumber}`
toSstring
luckyNumber.toString()
String
String(luckyNumber)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
string-interpolation
toSstring
String

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 23 hours ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark you provided tests the performance of different methods for converting a variable, `luckyNumber`, which holds a random integer, into a string format. Below, we’ll analyze the three methods being compared, their pros and cons, and discuss any relevant libraries or language features involved in the test.

### Benchmark Overview

The benchmark compares three approaches for string conversion in JavaScript:

1. **Template Literals (string-interpolation)**
   - Benchmark Definition: `` `${luckyNumber}` ``
   - Test Name: `string-interpolation`

2. **`toString()` Method**
   - Benchmark Definition: `luckyNumber.toString()`
   - Test Name: `toSstring`

3. **`String` Function**
   - Benchmark Definition: `String(luckyNumber)`
   - Test Name: `String`

### Comparison of Approaches

1. **Template Literals**
   - **Pros**: 
     - More readable and clean syntax, especially when combining multiple variables or literals.
     - Allows for easy expression interpolation and multi-line strings.
   - **Cons**: 
     - In certain contexts, it may introduce slight overhead compared to direct method calls, although this typically isn't significant.
   - **Use Case**: Great for scenarios where you need to embed expressions or format strings dynamically.

2. **`toString()` Method**
   - **Pros**: 
     - Straightforward and easy to understand for converting a number to a string.
     - Slightly faster than the `String` function in some benchmarks.
   - **Cons**: 
     - Throws an error if called on `null` or `undefined`, which may require additional type checking.
   - **Use Case**: A reliable method for converting known numeric values to strings.

3. **`String` Function**
   - **Pros**: 
     - Handles various types, including `null` and `undefined` without throwing an error (returns "null" or "undefined").
     - Supports converting other data types directly to strings, making it versatile.
   - **Cons**: 
     - Performance may be slightly slower compared to specific methods like `toString()`, especially in tight loops or performance-critical applications.
   - **Use Case**: Useful when converting various types to string without worrying about the type, providing a safe fallback.

### Benchmark Results Overview

Each approach was benchmarked on a MacOS X environment using Chrome 131, with the following execution speeds:

- **string-interpolation**: 18,137,490 executions per second.
- **toSstring**: 18,124,062 executions per second.
- **String**: 10,036,284 executions per second.

From the results, we see that:
- **Template literals** performed the best, outperforming the other methods.
- **`toString()`** was slightly slower but was still very fast.
- **`String` function** had the lowest execution speed among the three, highlighting a trade-off for its flexibility.

### Other Considerations and Alternatives

When developing applications with JavaScript, the choice between these string conversion methods can depend on context:

- **Performance-Critical Code**: If maximum performance is a concern and the context is clear (e.g., you know the value will always be a number), using `toString()` may be preferred.
- **Safety and Ease of Use**: If your code needs to handle different types of data or you want to avoid runtime errors, the `String` function is a safer choice.

In general, for most use cases, the differences in performance with these methods are negligible. Engineers should prioritize code readability and maintainability unless facing specific performance bottlenecks.

Alternatives to consider for string formatting in JavaScript include libraries like **Lodash** or **Underscore**, which offer utility functions for string manipulation, but for plain conversion tasks like this, the native methods are often sufficient. For more complex string manipulations or templating needs, frameworks like **React** or libraries like **Handlebars** can also provide additional capabilities.

Ultimately, the choice of method depends on the application's requirements, readability, and performance concerns.

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: yesterday)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
string-interpolation	18137490.0 Ops/sec
toSstring	18124062.0 Ops/sec
String	10036284.0 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

string-interpolation-vs-toString-vs-String (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: string-interpolation vs toSstring vs String

Created: yesterday by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

string-interpolation

toSstring

String

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 23 hours ago):