Benchmark: Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify Equality Comparison for Shallow Array of Strings. (custom)

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash@4.17.4/lodash.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

window.a = {
  'a': 'a',
   'b': 'b',
   'c': 'c',
   'd': 'd',
};
window.b = {
  'a': 'a',
   'b': 'b',
   'c': 'c',
   'd': 'd',
};

Tests:

_.isEqual()
_.isEqual(window.a, window.b)
JSON.stringify
JSON.stringify(window.a) === JSON.stringify(window.b);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
_.isEqual()
JSON.stringify

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into the world of JavaScript microbenchmarks on MeasureThat.net.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark compares the performance of two approaches for comparing shallow arrays of strings: `_.isEqual` from Lodash and JSON string comparison using the `===` operator. The test uses two identical arrays, `window.a` and `window.b`, which contain four strings each.

**Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify Equality Comparison**

The two tests are designed to measure the performance difference between these two approaches:

1. **`.isEqual(window.a, window.b)`**: This test calls the `isEqual` function from Lodash, passing in `window.a` and `window.b` as arguments. The `isEqual` function will recursively compare the elements of both arrays.
2. **`JSON.stringify(window.a) === JSON.stringify(window.b)`**: This test uses the `===` operator to compare the stringified representations of `window.a` and `window.b`. This approach assumes that two objects with the same properties and values have equal equality, which is not always the case.

**Pros and Cons**

**Lodash.isEqual:**

Pros:

* Recursively compares arrays element-wise
* Handles nested arrays and objects
* More flexible than JSON string comparison

Cons:

* Slower performance due to recursive function calls
* May cause performance issues with large inputs

**JSON.stringify Equality Comparison:**

Pros:

* Faster performance since it only requires a single string comparison
* Simple to implement and understand

Cons:

* Only compares property values, not the entire object structure
* May return incorrect results for objects with different property names or nested structures
* Not suitable for complex data structures like arrays or objects

**Library: Lodash**

Lodash is a popular JavaScript utility library that provides a set of functions for functional programming, array manipulation, and more. The `isEqual` function is one of its most useful exports, allowing you to compare two values in a flexible and accurate manner.

**Special JS Feature/Syntax**

This benchmark does not require any special JavaScript features or syntax beyond standard ES5 support. It's designed to be accessible to a wide range of software engineers with varying levels of JavaScript experience.

**Other Alternatives**

For array comparison, you might consider using other libraries like:

* **Array.prototype.every()` and `Array.prototype.some()`: These methods provide a more functional approach to comparing arrays, but may not offer the same level of flexibility as Lodash's `isEqual`.
* **`Object.keys()` and `Object.values()``: These methods can be used to compare object properties, but may not cover all edge cases.

For equality comparison, you might consider using:

* **`JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(obj)) === obj`**: This approach assumes that two objects with the same property values have equal equality. However, this method is not foolproof and may return incorrect results for certain data structures.
* **`Object.is()`**: This method is available in modern browsers and provides a more precise way to compare objects than `===`.

Keep in mind that these alternatives may have different performance characteristics or trade-offs in terms of accuracy.

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 4 years ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.116 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 80 on Mac OS X 10.15.1

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
_.isEqual()	760034.8 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify	603578.5 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify Equality Comparison for Shallow Array of Strings. (custom) (version: 0)

Test on isEqual performance

Comparing performance of: _.isEqual() vs JSON.stringify

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

_.isEqual()

JSON.stringify

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):