Ruby 2.3 safe navigation `&.` vs Active Support's try

benchmarks.rb

require "benchmark"
require "active_support/all"

Benchmark.bm do |x|
  count = 1_000_000
  label_size = 20

  x.report "check for nil:".rjust(label_size) do
    count.times { nil && nil.length }
  end

  x.report "check respond_to:".rjust(label_size) do
    count.times { nil.length if nil.respond_to?(:length) }
  end

  x.report "rescue:".rjust(label_size) do
    count.times { nil.length rescue nil }
  end

  x.report "active_support try:".rjust(label_size) do
    count.times { nil.try(:length) }
  end

  x.report "safe navigation:".rjust(label_size) do
    count.times { nil&.length }
  end
end

results.txt

       user     system      total        real
      check for nil:  0.040000   0.000000   0.040000 (  0.040230)
   check respond_to:  0.100000   0.000000   0.100000 (  0.101780)
             rescue:  2.080000   0.020000   2.100000 (  2.103482)
 active_support try:  0.150000   0.000000   0.150000 (  0.151765)
    safe navigation:  0.040000   0.000000   0.040000 (  0.040369)

summary.md

strategy	time	degradation
check for nil	0.040230	1.00
check respond_to	0.101780	2.529
rescue	2.103482	52.286
active_support try	0.151765	3.772
safe navigation	0.040369	1.003