Local Variables take 7x longer to access than global variables?

Posted by ItzWarty on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by ItzWarty
Published on 2010-04-20T21:48:17Z Indexed on 2010/04/20 22:13 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 159

Filed under:

JavaScript

|

optimization

|

variable-caching

|

benchmarking

I was trying to benchmark the gain/loss of "caching" math.floor, in hopes that I could make calls faster.

Here was the test:

<html>
<head>
<script>
window.onload = function()
{
  var startTime = new Date().getTime();
  var k = 0;
  for(var i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) k += Math.floor(9.99);
  var mathFloorTime = new Date().getTime() - startTime;

  startTime = new Date().getTime();
  window.mfloor = Math.floor;
  k = 0;
  for(var i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) k += window.mfloor(9.99);
  var globalFloorTime = new Date().getTime() - startTime;

  startTime = new Date().getTime();
  var mfloor = Math.floor;
  k = 0;
  for(var i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) k += mfloor(9.99);
  var localFloorTime = new Date().getTime() - startTime;

  document.getElementById("MathResult").innerHTML = mathFloorTime;
  document.getElementById("globalResult").innerHTML = globalFloorTime;
  document.getElementById("localResult").innerHTML = localFloorTime;
};
</script>
</head>
<body>
Math.floor: <span id="MathResult"></span>ms <br />
var mathfloor: <span id="globalResult"></span>ms <br />
window.mathfloor: <span id="localResult"></span>ms <br />
</body>
</html>

My results from the test:

[Chromium 5.0.308.0]:  
Math.floor: 49ms  
var mathfloor: 271ms  
window.mathfloor: 40ms  

[IE 8.0.6001.18702]  
Math.floor: 703ms  
var mathfloor: 9890ms  [LOL!]  
window.mathfloor: 375ms   

[Firefox [Minefield] 3.7a4pre]
Math.floor: 42ms  
var mathfloor: 2257ms  
window.mathfloor: 60ms   

[Safari 4.0.4[531.21.10] ]
Math.floor: 92ms 
var mathfloor: 289ms 
window.mathfloor: 90ms 

[Opera 10.10 build 1893]
Math.floor: 500ms 
var mathfloor: 843ms 
window.mathfloor: 360ms

[Konqueror 4.3.90 [KDE 4.3.90 [KDE 4.4 RC1]]]
Math.floor: 453ms 
var mathfloor: 563ms 
window.mathfloor: 312ms

The variance is random, of course, but for the most part

In all cases [this shows time taken]:
[takes longer] mathfloor > Math.floor > window.mathfloor [is faster]

Why is this? In my projects i've been using var mfloor = Math.floor, and according to my not-so-amazing benchmarks, my efforts to "optimize" actually slowed down the script by ALOT...

Is there any other way to make my code more "efficient"...? I'm at the stage where i basically need to optimize, so no, this isn't "premature optimization"...

Developer IT