400x Sorting Speedup by Switching a.localeCompare(b) to (a<b?-1:(a>b?1:0))

A great performance improvement can be obtained by declaring the collator object beforehand and using it's compare method. EG:

const collator = new Intl.Collator('en', { numeric: true, sensitivity: 'base' });
arrayOfObjects.sort((a, b) => {
  return collator.compare(a.name, b.name);
});

Here's a benchmark script comparing the 3 methods:

const arr = [];
for (let i = 0; i < 2000; i++) {
  arr.push(`test-${Math.random()}`);
}

const arr1 = arr.slice();
const arr2 = arr.slice();
const arr3 = arr.slice();

console.time('#1 - localeCompare');
arr1.sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(
  b,
  undefined, {
    numeric: true,
    sensitivity: 'base'
  }
));
console.timeEnd('#1 - localeCompare');

console.time('#2 - collator');
const collator = new Intl.Collator('en', {
  numeric: true,
  sensitivity: 'base'
});
arr2.sort((a, b) => collator.compare(a, b));
console.timeEnd('#2 - collator');

console.time('#3 - non-locale');
arr3.sort((a, b) => (a < b ? -1 : (a > b ? 1 : 0)));
console.timeEnd('#3 - non-locale');

An effective Approach that I found when dealing with /mostly/ latin characters is to use the operator whenever both strings match a specific regex. EG: /^[\w-.\s,]*$/

It's much faster if both strings match the expression, and at worst it seems to be slightly slower than blindly calling localeCompare.

Example here: http://jsperf.com/operator-vs-localecompage/11

Update: it seems like Intl.Collator is currently the best option for performance across the board: https://jsperf.com/operator-vs-localecompage/22

It's difficult to know the fastest sort without seeing the data you are sorting. But jsperf has lots of good tests showing the performance differences between types of sorting: http://jsperf.com/javascript-sort/45 http://jsperf.com/sort-algorithms/31

However none of these account for localised strings, and i'd imagine there is no easy way to sort localised strings and localeCompare is probably the best solution for this.

Looking at mozilla reference is says: "When comparing large numbers of strings, such as in sorting large arrays, it is better to create an Intl.Collator object and use the function provided by its compare property." https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/localeCompare

But going to the Intl.Collator reference it shows that is not support for firefox/safari https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Collator

you could try using some of the options on localCompare to speed up the performance. But I've just done a quick test changing the sensitivity level and it seems like it won't improve the performance:

list.sort(function(a, b) {
  return a.localeCompare(b, {sensitivity:'base'});
});

http://jsperf.com/sort-locale-strings