Benchmark Overview

MeasureThat.net is a website that allows users to create and run JavaScript microbenchmarks. The provided benchmark compares the performance of three equality checks: === (using strict equality), Lodash's isEqual, and Underscore's isEqual. We will analyze the options being compared, their pros and cons, and other considerations.

Comparison Options

The benchmark tests three options:

1. Strict Equality (===): This method checks if two values have the same value and data type.
2. Lodash's isEqual: Lodash is a utility library that provides a variety of functions for common tasks, including equality checking. isEqual takes two arguments: the first value to compare, and the second value to compare with. It returns a boolean indicating whether the values are equal.
3. Underscore's isEqual: Underscore is another utility library that provides similar functionality to Lodash. isEqual works similarly to Lodash's isEqual, but with some differences in behavior.

Pros and Cons

Here are some pros and cons of each option:

• Strict Equality (===):
  • Pros: Simple, fast, and widely supported.
  • Cons: Can be slow for large objects or complex data types, as it performs a deep equality check.
• Lodash's isEqual:
  • Pros: Provides more features than strict equality, such as ignoring null and undefined values.
  • Cons: Slower than strict equality due to its additional checks, and requires the Lodash library to be loaded.
• Underscore's isEqual:
  • Pros: Similar to Lodash's isEqual, with some differences in behavior. Faster than Lodash's isEqual.
  • Cons: Smaller performance advantage over strict equality compared to Lodash.

Library and Syntax Considerations

The benchmark uses two libraries:

• Lodash: A utility library that provides a wide range of functions for common tasks, including equality checking.
• Underscore: Another utility library with similar functionality to Lodash. The difference lies in its behavior, especially when dealing with null or undefined values.

Both libraries require additional code to be loaded and initialized before use.

Other Alternatives

If you want to compare the performance of other equality checks, such as:

• Weak Equality (==): This method checks if two values have the same value, but may not consider data types.
• JSON-Based Equality: This method uses JSON serialization to compare two objects.