Benchmark: JS Regex vs .startsWith vs .indexOf (string length 50 - 550)

HTML Preparation code:

<div></div>

Script Preparation code:

window.regexStart = /^test/;
window.regexEnd = /test$/;
window.match = 'test';
window.matchLength = window.match.length;
var data = window.data = [];
const possible = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789";
var TOTAL_STRINGS = window.TOTAL_STRINGS = 100000;

function getRandomInt(max) {
  return Math.floor(Math.random() * max);
}

function makeRandomString(len) {
  var text = "";
  for( var i=0; i < len; i++ ) {
    text += possible.charAt(getRandomInt(possible.length));
  }
  return text;
}

while (data.length < TOTAL_STRINGS) {
  data.push(makeRandomString(getRandomInt(500)+50));
}

Tests:

regex start
var x = 0; var TOTAL_STRINGS = window.TOTAL_STRINGS; var data = window.data; var regex = window.regexStart; while (x < TOTAL_STRINGS) { const str = data[x]; regex.test(str); x += 1; }
startsWith
var x = 0; var TOTAL_STRINGS = window.TOTAL_STRINGS; var data = window.data; var match = window.match; while (x < TOTAL_STRINGS) { const str = data[x]; str.startsWith(match) === 0; x += 1; }
regex end
var x = 0; var TOTAL_STRINGS = window.TOTAL_STRINGS; var data = window.data; var regex = window.regexEnd; while (x < TOTAL_STRINGS) { const str = data[x]; regex.test(str); x += 1; }
endsWith
var x = 0; var TOTAL_STRINGS = window.TOTAL_STRINGS; var data = window.data; var match = window.match; while (x < TOTAL_STRINGS) { const str = data[x]; str.startsWith(match) === 0; x += 1; }
indexOf start
var x = 0; var TOTAL_STRINGS = window.TOTAL_STRINGS; var data = window.data; var match = window.match; while (x < TOTAL_STRINGS) { const str = data[x]; str.indexOf(match) === 0; x += 1; }
indexOf end
var x = 0; var TOTAL_STRINGS = window.TOTAL_STRINGS; var data = window.data; var match = window.match; var length = window.matchLength; while (x < TOTAL_STRINGS) { const str = data[x]; str.indexOf(match) === str.length - length; x += 1; }

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
regex start
startsWith
regex end
endsWith
indexOf start
indexOf end

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 3 years ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/95.0.4638.69 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 95 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
regex start	398.3 Ops/sec
startsWith	441.0 Ops/sec
regex end	407.5 Ops/sec
endsWith	426.4 Ops/sec
indexOf start	12562.4 Ops/sec
indexOf end	12912.3 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

I'll break down the benchmark and its various components.

**Benchmark Overview**

The MeasureThat.net benchmark is designed to compare the performance of four string matching operations:

1. `regex.start` (also known as "regular expression start")
2. `startsWith`
3. `regex.end` (also known as "regular expression end")
4. `indexOf` with two variants:
	* `indexOf.start`: starts searching from the beginning of the string
	* `indexOf.end`: searches for a substring at the end of the original string

The benchmark generates a large dataset of random strings and measures the execution time for each operation.

**Options Compared**

The four options are:

1. **`regex.start`**: uses a regular expression to match the entire string
2. **`startsWith`**: checks if the string starts with a given prefix
3. **`regex.end`**: uses a regular expression to match the entire string, similar to `regex.start`, but without the `$` anchor (which would match at the end of the string)
4. **`indexOf.start`** and **`indexOf.end`**: search for a substring starting from the beginning or ending of the original string

**Pros and Cons**

Here's a brief summary of each option:

1. `regex.start`:
	* Pros: can be more efficient than other options when the regular expression is complex or the strings are long
	* Cons: requires compiling the regular expression, which can add overhead
2. `startsWith`:
	* Pros: simple and fast, with good performance for small prefixes
	* Cons: may not work well if the prefix is not present in the string, leading to false negatives
3. `regex.end`:
	* Pros: similar efficiency to `regex.start`, but without the `$` anchor
	* Cons: requires compiling the regular expression and using a different anchor than `regex.start`
4. `indexOf.start` and `indexOf.end`:
	* Pros: can be faster than `startsWith` when searching from the beginning or end of the string
	* Cons: may not work well if the substring is not present in the original string, leading to false negatives

**Benchmark Results**

The latest benchmark results show that:

* `regex.start` and `regex.end` are relatively close in performance, with `regex.start` being slightly faster on average
* `startsWith` is significantly slower than the two regular expression options
* `indexOf.start` and `indexOf.end` are generally slower than `startsWith`, but faster than `regex.start` and `regex.end`

**Conclusion**

In summary, the benchmark highlights the trade-offs between different string matching operations:

* Regular expressions (`regex.start` and `regex.end`) offer good performance for complex patterns or long strings, but require compiling the regular expression.
* `startsWith` is simple and fast, but may not work well if the prefix is not present in the string.
* `indexOf.start` and `indexOf.end` can be faster than `startsWith`, but may not work well if the substring is not present in the original string.

The choice of operation depends on the specific use case and requirements.

Related benchmarks:

JS Regex vs .startsWith vs .indexOf (string length 50 - 550) (version: 0)

fork of https://www.measurethat.net/Benchmarks/Show/975/11/regex-vs-indexof-vs-startswith-vs-substr

Comparing performance of: regex start vs startsWith vs regex end vs endsWith vs indexOf start vs indexOf end

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

regex start

startsWith

regex end

endsWith

indexOf start

indexOf end

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):