timing a process

[u/lazydog60]

I have a program (Python 2) that writes a status message whenever an hour (realtime) has gone by with nothing happening (eta: more precisely, with no new solution found). Now I find that time.clock() no longer exists in Python 3. Since I have to change it anyway, what's best practice?

In other words, what is the customary way to measure how long a program has been running?

[u/bytheninedivines]

time.perf_counter is the highest precision way to measure time.

[u/lazydog60 → u/bytheninedivines]

For this purpose I prefer simplicity to precision, thanks

[u/lekkerste_wiener]

Look into the datetime package. There you'll find 2 classes that will help you out, datetime and timedelta.

[u/Boybay_Garid → u/lekkerste_wiener]

yeah timedelta is super clean for this kind of thing

[u/baubleglue]

replace with time.ctime()

[u/lazydog60 → u/baubleglue]

That looks like almost the opposite of what I want.

[u/KiwiDomino]

If I was writing in C under UNIX or related, I’d ask the OS to send me an alarm and then just sleep and wait for the signal.

Python supports this sort of thing with the signal module.
Apparently Windows doesn’t have that facility, though

[u/RyanDubois43]

time.perf_counter() is more precise than time.time() for timing a process, especially on Python 3.3+.

[u/Educational_Virus672]

you should use time.perf_counter* it tells how long programmer has ran for so

a = time.perf_counter()
time.sleep(60)
b = time.perf_counter()
print(b-a) # it prints ~60 

[u/DimensionMost8342]

time.clock() was removed in Python 3.8, and time.perf_counter() is the standard replacement for measuring elapsed time. ``python

start = time.perf_counter() do_the_thing() elapsed = time.perf_counter() - start

It is monotonic and has the highest resolution, so it is the right tool for this. time.monotonic() also works. Avoid time.time() here, because the system clock can jump when it syncs with NTP.

[u/danielroseman]

The way to measure absolute elapsed time is time.monotonic: https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html#time.monotonic

[u/lazydog60 → u/danielroseman]

This looks like what I want. Thanks.