Simplified timeit

[C. Barnes]

I've been avoiding the timeit module because it seems
overly complicated. I finally coded my own function
(named timeit :), which has the following benefits:

1. Simple
2. Figures out how many times to evaluate the
callable passed to it.

Here's the code:

from time import clock

def timeit(f, time=0.5):
"""Calls f many times to determine the average time
to execute f.
Usually accurate to within 3%."""
count = 1
while True:
start = clock()
for i in range(count): f()
end = clock()
T = end - start
if T >= time: break
count *= 2
return T / count

Example:

from math import *

def f(x): return x * x - cos(x)
def g(): return f(1.0)

t = timeit(g)
print 'Time to execute f: ', t
print 'Calls to f per second: ', 1.0/t

PS: Try repeating this benchmark with psyco. I get a
70x increase in speed.

Connelly Barnes

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