Preferred Use of home_url()?

This isn’t a problem but rather I am just curious to see how others are using this function. The codex does not really say a preferred method of use although it does provide some straight-forward examples.

For example if my domain is example.com I can write any of these:

<a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/224062/<?php echo esc_url( home_url() ); ?>/example">Example Page</a>
<a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url("https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/") ); ?>example">Example Page</a>
<a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url('/example') ); ?>">Example Page</a>
<a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url('example') ); ?>">Example Page</a>
<a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url('example', 'relative') ); ?>">Example Page</a>

And they will all output the same result (simplified) :

<a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/224062/domain.com/example">Example Page</a>

I use the third example given most often and I understand the use of the last example, as at times I need to link to a secure page (https://), but what is the point of the other accepted variations?

Is one method considered a “best practice” or is it just left up to personal preference?

Million ways in WordPress to use home_url() or sister functions. The question to ask is: What function is a wrapper for other function?

To summarize, if you like to concatenate you may use:

get_bloginfo('url');
get_option('home');

If you like to have the control over scheme (http or https)

get_site_url( $blog_id, $path, $scheme );
get_home_url( $blog_id, $path, $scheme );
site_url( $path, $scheme );

Where site_url calls get_site_url:

function site_url( $path="", $scheme = null ) {
    return get_site_url( null, $path, $scheme );
}

You may like get_bloginfo('url'); or get_bloginfo('wpurl');
since it will return:

    case 'url' :
        $output = home_url();
        break;
    case 'wpurl' :
        $output = site_url();
        break;

The primitive is: get_option('home')
Because function get_home_url calls get_option('home').
What I wrote for get_option('home') is similar for get_option('siteurl') that came from get_bloginfo('wpurl').