How to accuratle mesurament the performance of a function?

Hello! So I'm trying to measurement the execution time of a function but I realized that I'm getting different results every time (for the same function). For example let's consider the following code snipped:

Mesurament time is not accurate. ($2215987) * Snippets * Snippets * GitLab

I have also tried with clock_gettime() and it gives me the same inaccurate results. However, what's weird is that If I try to do this more times, the seem to be close in times so only the first clock() will be inaccurate. Any ideas?

There are a multitude of reasons why.

1. Your program is a userland process, so all your clocks are to some extent an approximation.

2. calling malloc may involve a very expensive trap into the OS to get more memory. This seems quite likely on the very first call.
But you don't know when the first call is. The C startup code before you get to main may also call malloc, so you really don't know.

3. Repeated calling of the same code may benefit from the code already being in the instruction cache, as opposed to say main memory (or even on disk).

So
- try it with a user supplied buffer rather than calling malloc
- call it many times in a loop, then take the whole elapsed time, divide by the number of loop iterations, to get an average.

The only way you're getting instruction-accurate measurements is on a bare machine with no OS and no interrupts.
The more stuff you have going on in the background, the fuzzier your results are going to be.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Salem

There are a multitude of reasons why.

1. Your program is a userland process, so all your clocks are to some extent an approximation.

2. calling malloc may involve a very expensive trap into the OS to get more memory. This seems quite likely on the very first call.
But you don't know when the first call is. The C startup code before you get to main may also call malloc, so you really don't know.

3. Repeated calling of the same code may benefit from the code already being in the instruction cache, as opposed to say main memory (or even on disk).

So
- try it with a user supplied buffer rather than calling malloc
- call it many times in a loop, then take the whole elapsed time, divide by the number of loop iterations, to get an average.

The only way you're getting instruction-accurate measurements is on a bare machine with no OS and no interrupts.
The more stuff you have going on in the background, the fuzzier your results are going to be.

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Seriously thanks a lot!!! A great explanation so I will know what to avoid in the future! Have an amazing day!