how to pass parameters of a function when using timeit.Timer()

Question

This is the outline of a simple program

# some pre-defined constants A = 1 B = 2  # function that does something critical def foo(num1, num2):     # do something  # main program.... do something to A and B for i in range(20):     # do something to A and B     # and update A and B during each iteration  import timeit t = timeit.Timer(stmt="foo(num1,num2)")   print t.timeit(5) 

I just keep getting "global name foo is not defined"..... Can anyone help me on this? Thanks!

Answer 1

The functions can use arguments in timeit if these are created using closures, we can add this behaviours by wrapping them in another function.

def foo(num1, num2):     def _foo():         # do something to num1 and num2         pass     return _foo  A = 1 B = 2  import timeit t = timeit.Timer(foo(A,B))   print(t.timeit(5)) 

or shorter, we can use functools.partial instead of explicit closures declaration

def foo(num1, num2):     # do something to num1 and num2     pass  A = 1 B = 2  import timeit, functools t = timeit.Timer(functools.partial(foo, A, B))  print(t.timeit(5)) 

EDIT using lambda, thanks @jupiterbjy

we can use lambda function without parameters instead of functools library

def foo(num1, num2):     # do something to num1 and num2     pass  A = 1 B = 2  import timeit t = timeit.Timer(lambda: foo(A, B))  print (t.timeit(5))