Benchmark: str.match vs str.Split

Script Preparation code:

string = "This is a benchmark to test if matching a regex is faster that splitting a string";
regex = /\S+/gi;

Tests:

String.split
string.split(" ")
Regex.match
string.match(regex)

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
String.split
Regex.match

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 4 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
String.split	33973464.0 Ops/sec
Regex.match	2234457.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the benchmark and explain what's being tested.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark is testing two approaches: string splitting with `String.split()` and regular expression matching with `string.match(regex)`.

**Options Compared**

The options compared are:

1. `String.split()`: This method splits a string into an array of substrings using the specified separator (in this case, a space).
2. `Regex.match()`: This method tests if a string matches a given regular expression pattern.

**Pros and Cons**

* **`String.split()`**:
	+ Pros: Simple to use, fast, and efficient for simple splitting tasks.
	+ Cons: Can be slower for large strings or complex separators, as it requires iterating over the entire string.
* **`Regex.match()`**:
	+ Pros: Flexible and powerful for matching complex patterns, but can be slower than `String.split()` due to the overhead of regular expression processing.
	+ Cons: Requires knowledge of regular expressions, which can be overwhelming for beginners.

**Library**

There is no specific library mentioned in the benchmark definition. However, it's worth noting that JavaScript has a built-in `RegExp` object that provides a way to work with regular expressions.

**Special JS Features/Syntax**

This benchmark doesn't use any special JavaScript features or syntax beyond what's standard for testing purposes. If it did, it would be mentioned in the explanation.

**Other Alternatives**

For string splitting, other alternatives might include:

* `String.prototype.split()` (if you want to avoid creating an array)
* `Array.prototype.slice()` with a specific separator
* External libraries like `lodash` or `underscore`

For regular expression matching, other alternatives might include:

* `RegExp.prototype.test()`
* `String.prototype.indexOf()` and string concatenation for simple matching

**Benchmark Preparation Code**

The script preparation code creates two variables: `string` and `regex`. The `string` variable is set to a sample string with spaces, and the `regex` variable is set to a regular expression pattern that matches non-space characters (`\\S+`) in a global match mode (`gi`). This pattern is used for the `Regex.match()` test case.

**Individual Test Cases**

The benchmark defines two individual test cases:

1. `"string.split(\" \")"`: Tests string splitting with the built-in `String.split()` method.
2. `"string.match(regex)"`: Tests regular expression matching with the `string.match()` method and the previously defined regex pattern.

**Latest Benchmark Result**

The latest benchmark result shows the execution rates for both test cases on a specific Firefox 131 browser running on Ubuntu, Desktop, Linux x86_64 hardware. The results indicate that `String.split()` is faster than `Regex.match()`.

Related benchmarks:

str.match vs str.Split (version: 0)

Test String.match with regex against String.split with string. We are splitting a string at the spaces.

Comparing performance of: String.split vs Regex.match

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

String.split

Regex.match

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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