Benchmark: reduce: spreading acc vs mutating acc

HTML Preparation code:

<!--your preparation HTML code goes here-->

Script Preparation code:

function generateID(length = 10) {
    const characters = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789';
    let result = '';
    const charactersLength = characters.length;
    
    for (let i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        // Generate a random index based on characters length
        const randomIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * charactersLength);
        // Append the character at the random index to the result string
        result += characters[randomIndex];
    }

    return result;
}

const data = new Array(100).fill('a').map(() => ({ key: generateID(), value: 'value' }));

Tests:

spread acc
const result = data.reduce((acc, item) => { return { ...acc, [item.key]: item.value, }; }, {});
mutate acc
const result = data.reduce((acc, item) => { acc[item.key] = item.value; return acc; }, {});

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
spread acc
mutate acc

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 16 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4.1 Safari/605.1.15

Browser/OS: Safari 17 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
spread acc	5739.9 Ops/sec
mutate acc	242273.1 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 20 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

This benchmark tests two approaches to accumulating data using the `Array.prototype.reduce` method in JavaScript: one that uses the "spread" syntax to create a new object on each iteration and another that mutates the accumulator object directly.

### Approaches Tested:

1. **Spread Accumulator (`spread acc`)**:
   ```javascript
   const result = data.reduce((acc, item) => {
       return {
           ...acc,
           [item.key]: item.value,
       };
   }, {});
   ```
   - **Description**: In this approach, on each iteration of the `reduce`, a new object is created by spreading the contents of the accumulator (`acc`) into a new object and adding a new key-value pair from the current `item`.
   - **Pros**:
     - Immutable Pattern: Keeps the original accumulator untouched, which can be beneficial in functional programming paradigms where immutability is favored.
     - Clearer intention: Might be easier to understand at a glance since it resembles merging two objects.
   - **Cons**:
     - Performance: Creates a new object on every iteration, leading to significantly higher memory and CPU usage, especially with larger datasets.

2. **Mutating Accumulator (`mutate acc`)**:
   ```javascript
   const result = data.reduce((acc, item) => {
       acc[item.key] = item.value;
       return acc;
   }, {});
   ```
   - **Description**: This approach modifies the `acc` object directly by assigning the new key-value pairs from the `item`.
   - **Pros**:
     - Performance: More efficient since it avoids the overhead of creating new objects. This is particularly advantageous in high-performance scenarios.
     - Lower memory footprint: Reduces the amount of temporary objects created during the execution of the function.
   - **Cons**:
     - Mutable Pattern: Alters the accumulator directly, which can lead to bugs in environments where immutability is important (e.g., React state management).
     - Less clear intent: It may be slightly harder to follow what is happening, especially for new developers or those less familiar with JavaScript.

### Benchmark Results:
- **Mutate Acc**: Achieved **206025.27 executions per second**.
- **Spread Acc**: Only managed **5350.79 executions per second**.

### Conclusion and Considerations:
The benchmark clearly indicates that mutating the accumulator is significantly faster than using the spread operator for creating new objects in this scenario.

### Alternatives:
Beyond these two options, there are additional alternatives for accumulating data:
- **Using `Object.assign()`**: Similar to the spread method but slightly more efficient than the spread operator, particularly in some engines.
```javascript
const result = data.reduce((acc, item) => {
    return Object.assign({}, acc, { [item.key]: item.value });
}, {});
```
- **Using a `for` loop**: If performance is a critical requirement, using a simple `for` loop may offer even better performance due to reduced overhead in function calls and operations.
```javascript
const result = {};
for (let i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
    result[data[i].key] = data[i].value;
}
```

Each alternative has its trade-offs in terms of readability, maintainability, and performance, depending on the specific use case and the developers' preferences.

Related benchmarks:

reduce: spreading acc vs mutating acc (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: spread acc vs mutate acc

Created: 21 days ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

spread acc

mutate acc

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 20 days ago):