Timeit not returning actual time

Question

I am testing an implementation of Heap using the timeit module, but I can't get it to print time in float:

def testCustomHeapStartUp(*args):
    h = MinHeap(args[0])
    return True

if __name__ == "__main__":
    for i in range(3):
        testList = random.sample(range(100), 100)
        print(timeit.Timer("testCustomHeapStartUp(testList)", \
            "from __main__ import testCustomHeapStartUp; from __main__ import testList; gc.enabled()"))

This is the output:

<timeit.Timer object at 0x101a58978>
<timeit.Timer object at 0x101a58978>
<timeit.Timer object at 0x101a58978>

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '16 at 18:36

timeit.Timer(...) only creates the instance, it doesn't run and time the code.

You need to call the .timeit() function on the Timer instance:

print(timeit.Timer(..., ...).timeit(n))

Where n is the number of times you want timeit() to to run the snippet.

Because timeit is showing up so often, I would refactor your code as:

from timeit import Timer

def testCustomHeapStartUp(*args):
    h = MinHeap(args[0])
    return True

if __name__ == "__main__":
    for i in range(3):
        testList = random.sample(range(100), 100)
        t = Timer(
            "testCustomHeapStartUp(testList)",
            "from __main__ import testCustomHeapStartUp; from __main__ import testList; gc.enabled()",
            )
        print(t.timeit())

Timeit not returning actual time

1 Answers1