Safe Navigation vs Try in Rails (Part 2: Performance)

This Note is an extension of Safe Navigation vs Try in Rails (Part 1: Basic Differences)

Method try() comes from Active Support component of Ruby on Rails. Safe Navigation Operator is Ruby native feature.

Let's check performance!

 require 'benchmark' class Foo attr_accessor :name end foo = Foo.new bar = nil Benchmark.bm(35) do |x| x.report('Successful access: try(...): ') { 1_000_000.times { foo.try(:name) } } x.report('Successful access: &.: ') { 1_000_000.times { foo&.name } } x.report('Successful access: control sample: ') { 1_000_000.times { foo.name } } x.report('Failed access: try(...): ') { 1_000_000.times { bar.try(:nonexistent) } } x.report('Failed access: safe navigation: ') { 1_000_000.times { bar&.nonexistent } } end;nil 

 user system total real Successful access: try(...): 0.498216 0.005748 0.503964 ( 0.530010) Successful access: &.: 0.062146 0.000943 0.063089 ( 0.069714) Successful access: control sample: 0.062411 0.001098 0.063509 ( 0.069603) Failed access: try(...): 0.172535 0.004374 0.176909 ( 0.194386) Failed access: safe navigation: 0.054141 0.001029 0.055170 ( 0.065502) 

Safe navigation is about 7 times faster than method try() for successful navigation and 3 times faster for unsuccessful.