benchmark -- accurate timing of execution

Synopsis

Usage:

benchmark s
Inputs:
- s, a string, a string containing Macaulay2 code
Outputs:
- a real number, the number of seconds it takes to evaluate the code in s

Description

Produces an accurate timing for the code contained in the string s. The value returned is the number of seconds.

i1 : benchmark "sqrt 2p100000"
--warning: code being benchmarked ran longer the first time (.00110517 seconds)
--         perhaps results were cached

o1 = .000339173252313169

o1 : RR (of precision 53)

The snippet of code provided will be run enough times to register meaningfully on the clock, and the garbage collector will be called beforehand.

For the programmer

The object benchmark is a function closure.