Timing is everything
Here for your delight.
A simple way to track timing in Javascript.
function timestamp(){return (new Date()).valueOf();}
// TIMER Function, wraps timing arround function call
function timer(f){
var t1 = timestamp();
for(var i = 0; i < 1000; i++){
f();
}
var t2 = timestamp();
return t2-t1;
}
// The function to test
var testFunc = function(){
var v = (window["DoYouBelieveInSpeedReading"])?true,false;
}
// Now call the timer
alert("time taken="+(timer(testFunc)/1000) + " seconds" );
The core is converting a date object into milliseconds: date.getValueOf(). This will give you a Long of the number of millseconds since 1970.
so var t1 = timestamp(); will store the start time.
Then do the thing you want to test… I would suggest a very large number of times… I needed to make it 100,000 for the Regex below.
and var t2 = timestamp(); becomes the end time.
Now totalTimeTaken = t2 -t1; in millseconds.
Finally time = totalTimeTaken/1000; to get the number of seconds that the function took.
I wrapped it all up in a function timer…
which can be called by
alert(”time taken=”+timer(myFunc)/1000);
I recently used this to test String matching functions, to find that indexOf is blisteringly fast, followed closely by pattern.test, and then way behind that String.match .
For 100,000 repetitions:
String.match: 1300ms
pattern.test: 360ms
String.indexOf: 180ms
So the moral of todays story is…
-
use indexOf if you can
-
pattern.test if you must have REGEX or more than one match
-
and AVOID String.match if you can
Just remember that premature optimization is a bad thing…
Happy Testing…!
