Testing array.splice vs array.pop vs set.delete

You have an array. Its sort order doesn’t matter. You want to remove an item from this array.

The obvious thing to do would be to use splice:

function remove(array, item) {
  const index = array.indexOf(item);
  array.splice(index, 1);
}

But there’s a much faster way:

function remove(array, item) {
  const index = array.indexOf(item);
  array[index] = array[array.length - 1];
  array.pop();
}

In my tests this is signficantly faster with large arrays, and never slower.

The fastest approach of all, though, is to use a set rather than an array:

set.delete(item);

You can test for yourself by running this code in your console. Note that the bulk of the time is spent in indexOf, and this test makes finding an index as slow as possible:

function test(size = 10000) {
  const array = [];
  for (let i = 0; i < size; i += 1) {
    if (i % 2 === 0) {
      array.push(i);
    } else {
      array.unshift(i);
    }
  }

  const set = new Set(array);

  function with_splice() {
    const clone = array.slice();
    console.time('with splice');
    for (let i = 0; i < size; i += 1) {
    const index = clone.indexOf(i);
      clone.splice(index, 1);
    }
    console.timeEnd('with splice');
  }

  function with_pop() {
    const clone = array.slice();
    console.time('with pop');
    for (let i = 0; i < size; i += 1) {
      const index = clone.indexOf(i);
      clone[index] = clone[clone.length - 1];
      clone.pop();
    }
    console.timeEnd('with pop');
  }

  function with_set() {
    console.time('with set');
    for (let i = 0; i < size; i += 1) {
      set.delete(i);
    }
    console.timeEnd('with set');
  }

  with_splice();
  with_pop();
  with_set();
}

test();