How to use timeit when timing a function

Question

Let me start off by saying I know almost nothing about python but have to write a program in three different languages (already done in java and c++).

I need to be a

Answer 1

You can use below code as an example:

import timeit

def string_generator(size):
    return (size/8) * "ABCDEFGH"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    #the below line runs the statement inside of '' for 100 times (number).
    print timeit.timeit('"-".join(str(n) for n in range(100))',number=100)
    #the below line runs the statement inside of '' for 10 times (number) and repeat it 3 times.
    print timeit.repeat('"-".join(str(n) for n in range(100))',repeat=3,number=10)
    #if you would like to time a function, you can do it similar to below example:
    print timeit.timeit("string_generator(2**12)", setup="from __main__ import string_generator")

The results are :

0.00784516334534
[0.0009770393371582031, 0.00036597251892089844, 0.00037407875061035156]
0.414484977722

The unit for the results is second. More examples are exist in python website. enter link description here

Also you can use ipython. The same example is listed below.

In [25]: %timeit "-".join(str(n) for n in range(100))

The result is :

10000 loops, best of 3: 22.9 µs per loop

As you can see, the unit is macro second.