Convenience API for timeit.main

[ncoghlan]

BPO	5441
Nosy	@rhettinger, @ncoghlan, @pitrou
Superseder	bpo-6422: timeit called from within Python should allow autoranging

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2012-06-26.12:45:22.801>
created_at = <Date 2009-03-08.06:02:22.454>
labels = ['easy', 'type-feature', 'library']
title = 'Convenience API for timeit.main'
updated_at = <Date 2018-03-14.15:02:20.949>
user = 'https://github.com/ncoghlan'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2018-03-14.15:02:20.949>
actor = 'jmetz'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2012-06-26.12:45:22.801>
closer = 'ncoghlan'
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2009-03-08.06:02:22.454>
creator = 'ncoghlan'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 5441
keywords = ['easy']
message_count = 6.0
messages = ['83305', '83309', '85688', '164069', '313822', '313825']
nosy_count = 6.0
nosy_names = ['rhettinger', 'ncoghlan', 'pitrou', 'eli.bendersky', 'ssapin', 'jmetz']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = 'needs patch'
status = 'closed'
superseder = '6422'
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue5441'
versions = ['Python 3.2']

[ncoghlan]

For quick and dirty benchmarking, timeit.main() is one of the handiest
tools out there, but calling it from Python code is a little tedious
since you need to construct a fake list of command line arguments in
order to call it.

What would be nice is a convenience function that accepted appropriate
arguments, with timeit.main being refactored to parse the command line
arguments and then call the new convenience function.

Possible API:

def measure(stmt="pass", setup="pass", timer=default_timer,
            repeat=default_repeat, number=default_number,
            verbosity=0, precision=3)

The new function would cover the latter section of the current main()
function, starting from the line "t = Timer(stmt, setup, timer)".

[pitrou]

It would be even better if you could pass a locals or globals
dictionnary instead of the "setup" arg.
And even even better if it could implicitly get the locals/globals from
the calling frame :-)

[rhettinger]

See related discussion in bpo-2527 and bpo-1397474.

[ncoghlan]

Close in favour of bpo-6422 - that one at least has a patch :)

[jmetz]

Don't understand how bpo-6422 addresses this - would also like to see a more convenient API for timing; at present CLI gives a nice formatted output, and timeit.timeit gives just the raw timing in seconds.

Would be easy to implement by simply refactoring main() in to the command line parsing component (first ~ 50 lines from https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Lib/timeit.py#L256 to ~https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Lib/timeit.py#L312 ) and actual timing and printing component, which could then be called via API.

Am happy to work this up if this can be reopened...?

[jmetz]

More specifically, bpo-6422 also mentions at least in part this functionality, but the main focus there seems to be the autorange function.

Propose splitting these two by reopening this use.