Run results for: Explicit call vs apply

Run details:

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:48.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/48.0

Browser: Firefox 48

Operating system: Mac OS X 10.11

Device Platform: Other

Date tested: 8 years ago

Test name	Executions per second
Explicit call	37535296.0 Ops/sec
Apply call	7786941.0 Ops/sec
Apply with arguments call	1038364.7 Ops/sec

Script Preparation code:

function wrapExplicit(fn) {
  return function(a1, a2, a3) {
    return fn.call(this, this, a1, a2, a3)
  }
}

function wrapApply(fn) {
  return function() {
    var args = [this]
	for (let i = 0, len = arguments.length; i < len; i++) {
      args[i + 1] = arguments[i]
  	}
  	return fn.apply(this, args)
  }
}

function wrapApplyWithArguments(fn) {
  return function() {
  	return fn.apply(this, [this].concat(arguments))
  }
}

function fn(thisArg, a1, a2, a3) {
  thisArg.result = a1 + a2 + a3
}

var explicitCall = { fn: wrapExplicit(fn) }
var applyCall = { fn: wrapApply(fn) }
var applyWithArgumentsCall = { fn: wrapApplyWithArguments(fn) }

Tests:

Explicit call
explicitCall.fn(Math.random(), Math.random(), Math.random())
Apply call
applyCall.fn(Math.random(), Math.random(), Math.random())
Apply with arguments call
applyWithArgumentsCall.fn(Math.random(), Math.random(), Math.random())

Run results for: Explicit call vs apply

See if there is a real benefit to handle small arity function calls with explicit calls or if apply is sufficient.

Explicit call

Apply call

Apply with arguments call