Timeit from the command line in Python

Python has a module called timeit, whose function should be obvious. It can be used simply from the command line.

python -m timeit [-n N] [-r N] [-s S] [-t] [-c] [-h] [statement ...]

The -s flags an argument that should be executed only once. Multiple -s [setup code] lines can be included. There can also be multiple statements which is, or are, executed many times and the timing reported. I was curious about the relative speed of two approaches to grouping list elements (post here). I put the code for the two functions into a module test.py (the listing is at the end of the post).

Here is what I got:

$ python -m timeit -s 'import test' 'list(test.grouper(2,"abcdef"))' 100000 loops, best of 3: 5.34 usec per loop $ python -m timeit -s 'import test' 'test.grouper(2,"abcdef")' 100000 loops, best of 3: 2.19 usec per loop $ python -m timeit -s 'import test' 'list(test.chunks(2,"abcdef"))' 100000 loops, best of 3: 2.85 usec per loop $ python -m timeit -s 'import test' 'test.chunks(2,"abcdef")' 1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.685 usec per loop

The itertools solution takes 2-3 times as long, and getting the actual list rather than a generator or iterator has overhead as well.

from itertools import izip_longest def grouper(n, iterable, fillvalue=None): global itertools "grouper(3, 'ABCDEFG', 'x') --> ABC DEF Gxx" args = [iter(iterable)] * n return izip_longest(fillvalue=fillvalue, *args) def chunks(n, L): """ Yield successive n-sized chunks from L. """ for i in xrange(0, len(L), n): yield L[i:i+n]