fast-min

🔥 The Quickest Way to get the Minimum Value of an Array of Numbers (Typed or Untyped)

install

npm install fast-min

why is it so much faster?

This library excels with typed arrays. It takes into account the theoretical minimum of a typed array. For example, if you have a Uint8Array, it's not possible for a minimum value to be less than zero, so if we encounter a 0 in the array, we can stop searching for the minimum value.

usage

getting minimum value of a normal array

import fastMin from 'fast-min';

const result = fastMin([0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5]);
// result is -5

getting minimum value of a typed array

import fastMin from 'fast-min';

const pixel_values = Uint8Array.from([0, 128, 255, 34, ...]);
const result = fastMin(pixel_values);
// result is 0

no data value

If you want to ignore one or more specific values, you can set the no_data value.

import fastMin from 'fast-min';

const numbers = [99, 0, 7, 99, 5, ...];
const result = fastMin(numbers, { no_data: 0 });
// result is 5

const result = fastMax(numbers, { no_data: [5, 99] });
// result is now 7

performance tests

Here are test results comparing fast-min to two other popular libraries underscore and lodash. Tests have been conducted by creating an array of ten million random numbers from the lowest to the highest theoretical value of the typed array.

array type	library	average duration in milliseconds
Int8Array	fast-min	0.1
Int8Array	lodash	23.2
Int8Array	underscore	10.3
Uint8Array	fast-min	< 1
Uint8Array	lodash	23.2
Uint8Array	underscore	10.3
Int16Array	fast-min	0.4
Int16Array	lodash	23.5
Int16Array	underscore	10.4
Uint16Array	fast-min	0.8
Uint16Array	lodash	23.5
Uint16Array	underscore	10.6
Int32Array	fast-min	65.6
Int32Array	lodash	23.5
Int32Array	underscore	11
Uint32Array	fast-min	139.7
Uint32Array	lodash	27.2
Uint32Array	underscore	16.4
BigInt64Array	fast-min	56.1
BigInt64Array	lodash	78.8
BigInt64Array	underscore	63.9
BigUint64Array	fast-min	55.9
BigUint64Array	lodash	122.1
BigUint64Array	underscore	114.9