Benchmark: Regex vs split/join on replacing empty spaces

Script Preparation code:

var str = 'Abcd efghij klmnopqrstuv wxy Abcd efghij klmnopqrstuv wxy Abcd efghij klmnopqrstuv wxyAbcd efghij klmnopqrstuv wxy Abcd efghij klmnopqrstuv wxy Abcd efghij klmnopqrstuv wxy';

Tests:

regex
str.replace(/\s+/g, '');
replace
str.split(' ').join('');

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
regex
replace

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.116 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 83 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
regex	401116.6 Ops/sec
replace	521983.8 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 Overview**

The benchmark is designed to compare the performance of two approaches for replacing empty spaces in a string: using regular expressions (`regex`) versus using `split` and `join`.

**Script Preparation Code**

The script preparation code creates a test string `str` containing multiple occurrences of the same text with empty spaces.

**Html Preparation Code**

There is no HTML preparation code provided, which means that this benchmark focuses solely on JavaScript performance measurements.

**Individual Test Cases**

There are two individual test cases:

1. **regex**: This test case uses a regular expression (`/\\s+/g`) to replace all occurrences of one or more whitespace characters (`\\s+`) with an empty string (`''`).
2. **replace**: This test case uses the `split` method to split the input string into an array of substrings separated by whitespace, and then joins the array back into a single string using an empty separator (`''`).

**Library and Purpose**

There is no explicit library mentioned in the benchmark definition or test cases. However, it's likely that the regular expression engine used by JavaScript is part of the built-in standard library.

**Special JS Feature/ Syntax**

The `\\s+` syntax in the regular expression is a special feature called "word boundaries" or "whitespace character class." It matches one or more whitespace characters (including spaces, tabs, and newline characters). This syntax allows for a more efficient way to match whitespace patterns compared to using individual whitespace characters (` '`, `\t`, `\n`).

**Pros and Cons**

Here's a brief summary of the pros and cons of each approach:

1. **Regex**: Pros:
	* More flexible and powerful for matching complex patterns.
	* Can be faster in some cases due to caching and optimization.
Cons:
	* Less readable and maintainable code, especially for simple tasks.
	* May have performance overhead due to parsing and compilation.
2. **replace**: Pros:
	* Faster execution time due to the lack of parsing and compilation overhead.
	* Easier to read and understand, as it's a straightforward method call.
Cons:
	* Less flexible and powerful for matching complex patterns.

**Other Alternatives**

If you're looking for alternatives or variations on these approaches:

1. **use `trim()`**: If you only need to remove whitespace from the beginning and end of a string, using `trim()` might be a faster option.
2. **Use a library like `lodash` or `regex-utils**`: These libraries provide optimized regular expression functions that may outperform the built-in engine in some cases.
3. **Consider a different data structure**: If you're dealing with large datasets and need to perform string processing, using a more efficient data structure like an array of strings might be a better approach.

Keep in mind that these alternatives are not necessarily faster or better for all use cases and may depend on the specific requirements and constraints of your project.

Related benchmarks:

Regex vs split/join on replacing empty spaces (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: regex vs replace

Created: 4 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

regex

replace

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):