Measuring function execution time in R

Question

Is there a standardized way in R of measuring execution time of function   Obviously I can take system time before and after execution and then take the difference of those  but I would like to know if there is some standardized way or function  would like to not invent the wheel      I seem to remember that I have once used something like below   somesysfunction  myfunction with arguments     gt  Start time   2001-01-01 00 00 00    output of somesysfunction  gt   Result   of   myfunction           output of myfunction  gt  End time   2001-01-01 00 00 10      output of somesysfunction  gt  Total Execution time   10 seconds   output of somesysfunction

User · Answer

You can use MATLAB-style tic-toc functions  if you prefer   See this other SO question  Stopwatch function in R

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microbenchmark is a lightweight   50kB  package and more-or-less a standard way in R for benchmarking multiple expressions and functions   microbenchmark myfunction with arguments     For example    gt  microbenchmark  microbenchmark log10 5   log 5  log 10   times   10000  Unit  nanoseconds            expr min lq    mean median uq   max neval cld        log10 5    0  0 25 5738      0  1 10265 10000   a  log 5  log 10    0  0 28 1838      0  1 10265 10000   Here both the expressions were evaluated 10000 times  with mean execution time being around 25-30 ns

User · Answer

The package  tictoc  gives you a very simple way of measuring execution time  The documentation is in  https   cran fhcrc org web packages tictoc tictoc pdf    install packages  tictoc   require tictoc  tic   rnorm 1000 0 1  toc     To save the elapsed time into a variable you can do    install packages  tictoc   require tictoc  tic   rnorm 1000 0 1  exectime  lt - toc   exectime  lt - exectime toc - exectime tic

User · Answer

Another simple but very powerful way to do this is by using the package profvis  It doesn t just measure the execution time of your code but gives you a drill down for each function you execute  It can be used for Shiny as well   library profvis   profvis      your code here      Click here for some examples

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Another possible way of doing this would be to use Sys time     start time  lt - Sys time      Relevent codes    end time  lt - Sys time   time taken  lt - end time - start time time taken   Not the most elegant way to do it  compared to the answere above   but definitely a way to do it

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Although other solutions are useful for a single function  I recommend the following piece of code where is more general and effective   Rprof tf  lt -  log log   memory profiling   TRUE    the code you want to profile must be in between Rprof  NULL    print summaryRprof tf

User · Answer

As Andrie said  system time   works fine  For short function I prefer to put replicate   in it   system time  replicate 10000  myfunction with arguments

User · Answer

The built-in function system time   will do it   Use like  system time result  lt - myfunction with  arguments

User · Answer

There is also proc time      You can use in the same way as Sys time but it gives you a similar result to system time   ptm  lt - proc time    your function here proc time   - ptm   the main difference between using  system time    your function here      is that the proc time   method still does execute your function instead of just measuring the time    and by the way  I like to use system time with    inside so you can put a set of things

User · Answer

A slightly nicer way of measuring execution time  is to use the rbenchmark package  This package  easily  allows you to specify how many times to replicate your test and would the relative benchmark should be   See also a related question at stats stackexchange

User · Answer

You can use Sys time    However  when you record the time difference in a table or a csv file  you cannot simply say end - start  Instead  you should define the unit  f name  lt - function  args    start  lt - Sys time    quot  quot  quot  You codes here  quot  quot  quot  end  lt - Sys time   total time  lt - as numeric  end - start  units    quot mins quot     or secs         Then you can use total time which has a proper format

[r] Measuring function execution time in R

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