CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonwindows
Developper
Developper

Reputation: 89

Timer in Python on Windows

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)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1828

Answers (3)

Matt
Matt

Reputation: 1632

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)

Upvotes: 2

Saransh Gupta
Saransh Gupta

Reputation: 73

For high re-usability and ease of implementations, I would recommend -

Upvotes: 0

Dibakar Bose
Dibakar Bose

Reputation: 100

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

Upvotes: 1

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