Benchmark: Array manual search vs Regex.test (2)

Tests:

Array.includes
const box = ['###','#*#', '###']; for(let i=1 ; i < box.length-1 ; i++) { for(let j=1 ; j < box[i].length-1 ; j++) { if(box[i][j] === '*') { return true; } } } return false;
Regex.test
const regex = /,#\*#,/; const box = ['###','#*#','###']; regex.test(box);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Array.includes
Regex.test

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 18 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Array.includes	81411760.0 Ops/sec
Regex.test	4362095.5 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 18 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark provided tests two different approaches for checking the presence of a specific character ('*') in a two-dimensional array (in this case, represented as an array of strings). The two methods being compared are:

1. **Manual Array Search** using nested loops.
2. **Regular Expression Search** using the `RegExp.test()` method.

### Test Cases and Comparison

1. **Test Case: Array.includes**
   - **Code Definition**:
     ```javascript
     const box = ['###','#*#', '###'];
     for(let i=1; i < box.length-1; i++) {
         for(let j=1; j < box[i].length-1; j++) {
             if(box[i][j] === '*') {
                 return true;
             }
         }
     }
     return false;
     ```
   - **Approach**: This test case uses a manual two-dimensional search with nested loops to iterate over the array and check if the character in the current position is '*'. It starts from the first item of the inner strings and returns `true` immediately upon finding a match or `false` if none is found.

- **Pros**:
     - Clear and straightforward implementation for programmers.
     - High flexibility in terms of search criteria (can easily be modified to search for different characters or patterns).

- **Cons**:
     - It can be less efficient for very large datasets due to the complexity of nested iterations.
     - Hitting performance bottlenecks as the size of the data increases, especially if the character being searched for is sparse.

2. **Test Case: Regex.test**
   - **Code Definition**:
     ```javascript
     const regex = /,#\\*#,/;
     const box = ['###','#*#','###'];
     regex.test(box);
     ```
   - **Approach**: This test relies on using a **Regular Expression** to check for the presence of the '*'. However, there appears to be an issue in the provided regex which does not accurately search the contents of the `box` array since `RegExp.test()` doesn't operate on arrays but string values. It would be appropriate to join the array elements into a single string before passing it to `regex.test()`.

- **Pros**:
     - Regular expressions can efficiently handle more complex searching criteria and patterns beyond simple character matches.
     - If implemented correctly, this approach can be optimized in order to search through larger strings quickly.

- **Cons**:
     - The complexity of regular expressions can make them harder to read and maintain, especially for intricate patterns.
     - Performance can vary greatly depending on the complexity of the regex pattern being used.

### Results Analysis
From the benchmark results:
- The `Array.includes` implementation showed significantly higher performance, measuring **81,411,760 executions per second**.
- The `Regex.test` method, however, returned **4,362,095.5 executions per second**, indicating a substantial performance overhead in this particular case, likely due to improper usage of the regex without transforming the array into a single string.

### Alternatives
While the benchmark focuses on these two methods, there are alternatives to consider:

- **Using Array.prototype.find()**: This could be a more modern alternative if one seeks to keep code succinct and readable:
  ```javascript
  const found = box.find(row => row.includes('*'));
  ```

- **For Each Loops**: Using `forEach()` along with `includes()` can simplify the readability while retaining flexibility:
  ```javascript
  let found = false;
  box.forEach(row => {
      if (row.includes('*')) found = true;
  });
  ```

- **Advanced Libraries**: For more complex data manipulations, libraries such as Lodash can be utilized, although for basic character checks, native JavaScript is already effective.

### Conclusion
This benchmark illustrates an important comparison between traditional iteration and the use of regular expressions. While regex offers powerful pattern matching capabilities, for simple cases like this, native array methods provide better performance, ensuring efficiency in execution, particularly when maintained correctly. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches is crucial to optimizing performance in real-world applications.

Related benchmarks:

Array manual search vs Regex.test (2) (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: Array.includes vs Regex.test

Created: 18 days ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Array.includes

Regex.test

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 18 days ago):