If I have a function called a lot of times in a for loop and this function sometimes is running too much time, how can I use a timer for each call of function(to set and reset the timer each time)?
It looks like:
def theFunction(*args):
#some code (timer is on)
#In this point time is out, break and exit function
#Timer is reseted
for i in range(0,100):
theFunction(*args)
Use the time module like so:
import time
time_start = time.time()
#Do function stuff
time_stop = time.time()
#Check your time now
timed_segment = time_stop - time_start
#Repeat if needed
To run this multiple times in a for loop you will need to append times into a list as it runs like so:
import time
def function():
times_list = []
for x in range(10)
time_start = time.time()
#Do function stuff
time_stop = time.time()
#Check your time now
timed_segment = time_stop - time_start
times_list.append(timed_segment)
#Repeat as many times as needed
return times_list
If you want to break after a certain amount of time you can use a while loop instead like so:
import time
def function():
times_list = []
time_start = time.time()
time_end = time.time()
while time_end - time_start < 10: #after 10 seconds the while loop will time out
#Your function does stuff here
time_end = time.time()
#Next, append times to a list if needed
time_list.append(time_start - time_end)
return times_list
To stop the function after a certain time regardless of where it is, we can use threading like so:
import threading
from time import sleep
def do_stuff():
sleep(10)
print("1 + 2")
return
t = threading.Thread(target=do_stuff)
t.start()
t.join(timeout = 5)
In the above example, calling timeout in join will kill the thread after 5 seconds. We can also put this into a decorator if we plan on reusing it many times like so:
import threading
from time import sleep
def timeout(func):
def inner_func(*nums, **kwargs):
t = threading.Thread(target=func, args=(*nums,))
t.start()
t.join(timeout=5)
return inner_func
@timeout
def do_stuff(a,b):
sleep(3)
print(a+b)
return
do_stuff(1,3)
There is another module called timeit which can measure the execution time of small code snippets. I believe you can use that also. I have never used that module but it should work.
Here is the link to the doc page. Give it a look :: https://docs.python.org/2/library/timeit.html
see How to use timeit module as well
For high re-usability and ease of implementations, I would recommend -
Using decorators -
from time import time
def time_it(func):
def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
a=time()
func(*args, **kwargs)
print(a-time())
return wrapper
@time_it
def foo(s='this works'):
print(s)
foo()
Using profile.run - https://docs.python.org/2/library/profile.html#module-profile
