--- title: 'Using JS Set''s to Find Elements ' date: 2019-07-09T20:27:09.247Z tags: - Tech description: >- JS's `new Set()` can be the new Hash table optimization for reducing nested loops. So I've put together a little code snippet to show this in practice. --- Functionally for one check, this is identical to checking the `.indexOf()` or `.includes()` of an Array. However, in cases where you're filtering a large array down to match a list of ID's, for example, the nested looping can result in a performance hit. Traditionally hash tables were used for speeding up this search, but with ES2015 we can now leverage Sets which are easier to read and still result in a single loop that's equal to the length of the Array and no more. (Can be further optimized by ending when running out of needles) ```js // Example Data let hugeArray = [...Array(10000).keys()].map(id => { return {id}; }); // [{id: 0}, ..., {id: 9999}] let needles = [1010, 2020, 3030, 4040, 5050, 6060, 7070, 8080, 9090]; // Finding matching elements let needlesSet = new Set(needles); let matches = hugeArray.filter(obj => needlesSet.has(obj.id)); ``` https://gitlab.com/snippets/1873655