The duration for which we want to delay the execution is passed as an argument to the sleep function in seconds.
Python count wall clock time.
Time module in python provides various time related functions.
Time clock method of time module in python is used to get the current processor time as a floating point number expressed in seconds.
A clock with the highest available resolution to measure a short duration.
Note that different systems will have different accuracy based on their internal clock setup ticks per second.
Perf counter function always returns the float value of time in seconds.
A prerequisite before we dive into the difference of measuring time in python is to understand various types of time in the computing world.
The precision depends on that of the c function of the same name but in any case this is the function to use for benchmarking python or timing algorithms.
The first type of time is called cpu or execution time which measures how much time a cpu spent on executing a program.
Also note that clock returns different things on different platforms.
To measure time elapsed during program s execution either use time clock or time time functions.
Pythom time method clock returns the current processor time as a floating point number expressed in seconds on unix.
On windows this function returns wall clock seconds elapsed since the first call to this function as a floating point number.
The second type of time is called wall clock time which measures the total time to execute a program in a computer.
Python s time library contains a predefined sleep function.
Return the value in fractional seconds of a performance counter i e.
It does include time elapsed during sleep and is system wide.
For the best measure of elapsed time since python 3 3 use time perf counter.
On unix return the current processor time as a floating point number expressed in seconds.
A clock with the highest available resolution to measure a short duration.
Time clock method also call c library function of the same name to get the result.
The precision of returned float value depends on the called c library function.
As most of the functions defined in time module call corresponding c library function.
It does include time elapsed during sleep and is system wide.
The python docs state that this function should be used for benchmarking purposes.
On windows this function returns wall clock seconds elapsed since the first call to this function as a floating point number based on the win32 function queryperformancecounter.
But it s generally at least under 20ms.