Benchmark: RegEx.test vs. String.includes vs. String.match vs String.search

Script Preparation code:

var string = "Hello world!";
var regex = /Hello/;

Tests:

RegEx.test
regex.test(string);
String.includes
string.includes("Hello");
String.match
string.match("Hello");
String.search
string.search("Hello");

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
RegEx.test
String.includes
String.match
String.search

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 2 years ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/104.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 104 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
RegEx.test	5909339.0 Ops/sec
String.includes	14212157.0 Ops/sec
String.match	2819011.5 Ops/sec
String.search	3032145.8 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into the explanation of the provided benchmark.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark compares the performance of four different methods for testing if a string contains a specific substring: `RegExp.test()`, `String.includes()`, `String.match()`, and `String.search()`.

**Methods Compared**

1. **`RegExp.test()`**: This method uses a regular expression engine to test if the entire input string matches the specified pattern.
2. **`String.includes()`**: This method checks if the input string contains the specified substring, without performing any actual matching.
3. **`String.match()`**: This method returns an array containing all non-overlapping matches of the specified pattern in the input string, or `null` if no match is found. It's similar to `RegExp.test()`, but returns an array instead of a boolean value.
4. **`String.search()`**: This method returns the index of the first occurrence of the specified substring in the input string, or `-1` if no match is found.

**Pros and Cons**

* **`RegExp.test()`**:
	+ Pros: Can be used to test for exact matches, including edge cases like empty strings.
	+ Cons: May be slower than other methods due to the overhead of compiling a regular expression.
* **`String.includes()`**:
	+ Pros: Fastest method among those compared, as it only checks if the substring is present in the input string without performing actual matching.
	+ Cons: Returns `true` for substrings that don't actually appear in the input string, which may be misleading.
* **`String.match()`**:
	+ Pros: Can be used to get all matches of a pattern in a single operation.
	+ Cons: Slower than `RegExp.test()`, as it returns an array instead of a boolean value.
* **`String.search()`**:
	+ Pros: Fastest method among those compared, as it only returns the index of the first occurrence without performing actual matching.
	+ Cons: Returns `-1` for no match, which may be misleading.

**Libraries and Special Features**

None of the methods rely on external libraries. However, `RegExp.test()` uses the built-in regular expression engine to test for patterns in strings.

No special JavaScript features or syntax are used in this benchmark.

**Alternatives**

Other methods for testing if a string contains a substring include:

* Using `indexOf()` method: This method returns the index of the first occurrence of the specified substring, or `-1` if no match is found.
* Using `toLowerCase()` and `includes()`: This method checks if the input string contains the specified substring in a case-insensitive manner.

Note that the choice of method depends on the specific requirements of your use case. If you need to test for exact matches, `RegExp.test()` or `String.match()` might be suitable. If you only care about whether the substring is present in the input string without performing actual matching, `String.includes()` might be faster.

Related benchmarks:

RegEx.test vs. String.includes vs. String.match vs String.search (version: 0)

<b>Comparing performance of:</b> RegEx.test vs String.includes vs String.match vs String.search

Comparing performance of: RegEx.test vs String.includes vs String.match vs String.search

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

RegEx.test

String.includes

String.match

String.search

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):