Tag: programming

There are tons of ways to calculate elapsed time (in seconds) for Python code. But which is the best way?

So far, I find that the “timeit” method seems to give good results, and is easy to implement. Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7370801/measure-time-elapsed-in-python

Use timeit.default_timer instead of timeit.timeit. The former provides the best clock available on your platform and version of Python automatically:

from timeit import default_timer as timer

start = timer()
# ...
end = timer()
print(end - start) # Time in seconds, e.g. 5.38091952400282

This is the answer by the user “jfs” on Stack Overflow.

Benefits of the above method include:

• Using timeit will produce far more accurate results since it will automatically account for things like garbage collection and OS differences (comment by user “lkgarrison”)

---

Please comment below if you know other ways of measuring elapsed time on Python!

Other methods include:

• time.clock()  (Deprecated as of Python 3.3)
• time.time() (Is this a good method?)
• time.perf_counter() for system-wide timing,
• or time.process_time() for process-wide timing

 

Step 1 is to create a Bash file (using any editor, even Notepad). Sample code:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
python testing.py &
python testingb.py &

The above code will run two Python files “testing.py” and “testingb.py” simultaneously. Add more python scripts if needed. The first line is called the “shebang” and signifies the computer to run bash (there are various versions but according to StackOverflow the above one is the best).

The above bash file can be saved to any name and any extension, say “bashfile.txt”.

Step 2 is to login to Terminal (Mac) or Putty (Windows).

Type:

chmod +x bashfile.txt

This will make the “bashfile.txt” executable.

Follow up by typing:

nohup ./bashfile.txt

This will run the “bashfile.txt” and its contents. The output will be put into a file called “nohup.out”. The “nohup” option is preferred for very long scripts since it will keep running even if the Terminal closes (due to broken connection or computer problems).