print time comparison: IDLE versus terminal on ultra 20

[MrJean1]

On my Ultra 20 box, the test program takes 0.00039982 secs in a
terminal window and 0.236839 secs in IDLE, i.e. about 600x slower.
This is ActivePython 2.4.3 for Solaris 10 on a 2+ GHz Opteron.

A partial explanation for the difference in run time between terminal
and IDLE is that IDLE uses thru a Tkinter/Tcl/Tk window which
postprocesses the output, like colorizing, etc.

 /Jean Brouwers

PS) On MacOS X 10.3.9 and a 400 MHz G4 the terminal time is 0.172556
secs and IDLE takes between 4.04731 and 4.87804 secs (depending on the
options selected) or 24-28x longer .  This is Python 2.4.3, IDLE 1.1.3
and Tcl/Tk 8.4.13 as distributed with MacOS X.


sam wrote:
> hi all,
>
> i continue to footle around on my spanking new ultra 20 (1.8GHz /
> Opteron Model 144), gradually trying to get to grips with python and
> unix both.
>
> the slow print time in IDLE had already struck me as rather odd.
> running programs with heavy print requirements from the terminal was a
> major discovery though, printing being so fast as to make everything
> appear at once except in the case of literally thousands of items to be
> printed.
>
> test case:
>
> import time
>
> time1 = time.time()
> for i in range(100):
>     print 'go get \'em, son!'
> time2 = time.time()
>
> print time2-time1
>
>
> in IDLE:
> 4.433 seconds
>
> in terminal:
> 0.001 seconds
>
> a difference of between 3 and 4 orders of magnitude is rather striking.
> anyone know what's going on here? is it a python, a unix thing, or
> something else?
> 
> sam