Function to show time to execute another function

[Cecil Westerhof]

On Sunday  7 Jun 2015 08:39 CEST, Cecil Westerhof wrote:

> Sometimes I just want to know how much time a function takes, but at
> the same time I also want the result of the function. For this I
> wrote the following function: def time_test(function, *args):
> startTime = time.time() results = function(*args) endTime =
> time.time() print('It took {0} seconds'.format(endTime - startTime))
> return results
>
> I can do:
> time_test(test_random, 100, 10 ** 5)
> This outputs:
> It took 17.01685857772827 seconds
> and returns:
> (98592, 100833, 0.977775133140936)
>
> When executing:
> time_test(test_random, 100, 10 ** 6)
> it outputs:
> It took 165.26371836662292 seconds
> and returns:
> (997103, 1002009, 0.9951038363926871)

I improved a little on the function:
    def time_test(function, arguments, print_time = True):
        start_time  = time.time()
        results     = function(*arguments)
        end_time    = time.time()
        used_time   = end_time - start_time
        if print_time:
            print('It took {0} seconds'.format(used_time))
        else:
            results = (used_time, results)
        return results

Default the function still prints the time, but it also possible to
return the time with the results.

Also the arguments are given as a tuple now.

With the following function:
    def test_random(length, multiplier = 10000):
        number_list = length * [0]
        for i in range(length * multiplier):
            number_list[random.randint(0, length - 1)] += 1
        minimum = min(number_list)
        maximum = max(number_list)
        return (minimum, maximum, minimum / maximum)

The call:
    time_test(test_random, (100, 10 ** 5))
outputs:
    It took 15.95521855354309 seconds
and gives:
    (98870, 100810, 0.9807558773931158)

And the call:
    time_test(test_random, (100, 10 ** 5), False)
does not output anything and gives
    (15.926506280899048, (99146, 100779, 0.9837962273886425))

Of-course a new run will give a different result.

-- 
Cecil Westerhof
Senior Software Engineer
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilwesterhof