Benchmark: Intl.Collator.compare() vs localeCompare()

Script Preparation code:

var a = "FOO BAR";
var b = "foo bar";

var options = {
  sensitivity: 'base'
};

var collator = new Intl.Collator(undefined, options);

Tests:

localeCompare()
a.localeCompare(b, undefined, options) === 0
Intl.Collator.compare()
collator.compare(a, b) === 0

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
localeCompare()
Intl.Collator.compare()

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 8 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
localeCompare()	84404.0 Ops/sec
Intl.Collator.compare()	9384362.0 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 its options.

**What is being tested?**

The test compares two string comparison methods in JavaScript: `Intl.Collator.compare()` and `localeCompare()`. Specifically, it tests how these methods handle case sensitivity in strings. The strings "FOO BAR" and "foo bar" are used as input to demonstrate the difference between the two methods.

**Options compared**

Two options are compared:

1. **sensitivity**: This option determines how the collator compares characters. It can be set to:
	* `'base'`: This is the default setting, which means that the comparison is case-sensitive.
	* `'variant'`: This setting makes the comparison case-insensitive.
2. The `Intl.Collator` constructor's second argument (the locale). In this benchmark, it is set to `undefined`, which means that the locale is not specified. This allows the browser to choose a default locale.

**Pros and cons of each approach**

1. **Intl.Collator.compare() with sensitivity = 'base'**:
	* Pros: Preserves case distinction in strings.
	* Cons: May lead to inconsistent results across different browsers or locales.
2. **Intl.Collator.compare() with sensitivity = 'variant'**:
	* Pros: Provides consistent results, even across different browsers and locales.
	* Cons: Ignores case differences in strings, which might not be desirable for all use cases.

3. **localeCompare()**:
	* Pros: Provides a standard way to compare strings in a locale-agnostic manner.
	* Cons: May not preserve the original case distinction of the input strings.

4. Using `undefined` as the locale argument:
	* Pros: Allows browsers to choose a default locale, which can lead to more consistent results.
	* Cons: May use a different locale than intended by the developer, leading to unexpected behavior.

**Library and its purpose**

The `Intl.Collator` API is part of the JavaScript standard library (ECMAScript Internationalization APIs). It provides a way to compare strings in a locale-aware manner, taking into account factors like case sensitivity, accent marking, and script-specific rules. In this benchmark, it's used to test the behavior of `compare()` with different settings.

**Special JS feature or syntax**

There is no special JavaScript feature or syntax mentioned in this benchmark. However, some readers might be familiar with the `Intl` namespace, which provides internationalization APIs for working with Unicode characters and locale-specific formatting.

**Other alternatives**

If you want to implement your own string comparison function without using the `Intl.Collator` API, you could consider using a library like `punycode` or `normalize.js`, which provide functions for normalizing and comparing strings in different ways. Alternatively, you could write your own custom implementation of a collator-like algorithm.

Keep in mind that these alternatives may not offer the same level of consistency and accuracy as the `Intl.Collator` API, especially when dealing with complex cases like accent marking or script-specific rules.

Related benchmarks:

Intl.Collator.compare() vs localeCompare() (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: localeCompare() vs Intl.Collator.compare()

Created: 3 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

localeCompare()

Intl.Collator.compare()

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):