Benchmark: lodash difference vs array filter

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/lodash/4.16.0/lodash.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

var arr1 = ['a', 'b', 'c'];

var arr2 = ['c', 'd', 'f'];

Tests:

lodash.difference
var diff = _.difference(arr2, arr1)
native
var diff = arr2.filter(v=> !(arr1.includes(v)))

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
lodash.difference
native

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 9 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/122.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 122 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
lodash.difference	3626941.8 Ops/sec
native	4919996.5 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 JavaScript microbenchmark on MeasureThat.net.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark compares two approaches to find the difference between two arrays: using the `_.difference` method from the Lodash library and using native JavaScript methods.

**Test Cases**

There are two test cases:

1. **Lodash.difference**: This test case uses the `_.difference` method from Lodash to find the difference between two arrays, `arr1` and `arr2`. The `_.difference` method returns a new array containing elements that are in `arr2` but not in `arr1`.
2. **Native**: This test case uses native JavaScript methods (`includes` and `filter`) to achieve the same result as Lodash's `_.difference` method.

**Options Compared**

The benchmark compares two options:

* **Lodash.difference**: Uses the `_.difference` method from Lodash, which is a utility library for functional programming in JavaScript.
* **Native**: Uses native JavaScript methods (`includes` and `filter`) to achieve the same result as Lodash's `_.difference` method.

**Pros and Cons**

Here are some pros and cons of each approach:

**Lodash.difference**

Pros:

* More concise and readable code
* Handles edge cases (e.g., empty arrays, null values) for you

Cons:

* Requires an external library to be included in the benchmark
* May have overhead due to the need to load Lodash

**Native**

Pros:

* No additional libraries are required
* Can potentially be faster since it avoids the overhead of loading an external library

Cons:

* More verbose code (requires explicit `includes` and `filter` checks)
* Requires more manual error handling for edge cases (e.g., empty arrays, null values)

**Other Considerations**

Both approaches have their trade-offs. The Lodash approach is often preferred due to its concise syntax and built-in support for common data structures, but it may require additional overhead due to the need to load the library.

The native approach, on the other hand, can be faster since it avoids the overhead of loading an external library, but it requires more manual error handling and may be less readable due to its verbose nature.

**Library: Lodash**

Lodash is a popular utility library for functional programming in JavaScript. It provides a range of functions for tasks such as array manipulation, string processing, and object transformation. In this benchmark, the `_.difference` method is used to find the difference between two arrays.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

None are mentioned in this benchmark.

Now that we've explored the benchmark, let's consider some alternative approaches:

* **Using other library methods**: There may be other libraries (e.g., Underscore.js) that provide similar functionality to Lodash. Using a different library might change the pros and cons of each approach.
* **Native alternative methods**: While `includes` and `filter` are commonly used in JavaScript, there may be other native methods that could achieve the same result as Lodash's `_.difference` method (e.g., using `map` and `every`).
* **Hand-rolled implementation**: Instead of using a library or native methods, one could implement their own algorithm for finding array differences. This would likely involve more manual error handling and potentially be slower than the other approaches.

I hope this explanation helps!

Related benchmarks:

lodash difference vs array filter (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: lodash.difference vs native

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

lodash.difference

native

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):