NAME¶

delta.pl - calculate Benchmark::Timer object call overhead

SYNOPSIS¶

    % ./delta.pl [n]

DESCRIPTION¶

This short script calculates the approximate speed overhead, on your system, of using Benchmark::Timer to time repeated benchmark calls, rather than using Time::HiRes and lexical temporary values directly. By default, it does 10,000 trials of timing nothing. It benchmarks using first Benchmark::Timer, then bare Time::HiRes calls, and reports the average times taken to perform the no-op.

Subtract the second from the first to find the approximate overhead imposed by using Benchmark::Timer. This is typically significant and consistent, but pretty tiny, on the order of microseconds. The magnitude of the overhead also falls quickly and asymptotically as the number of trials increases from one, levelling off at anything over around 100 trials.

SEE ALSO¶

Benchmark, Time::HiRes

AUTHOR¶

Andrew Ho <andrew@zeuscat.com>

COPYRIGHT¶

Copyright(c) 2000-2001 Andrew Ho.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.