High resolution time in Python3

Turbocapitalist · 05-31-2020, 09:19 AM

Which module for Python3 is available to provide high resolution alarm, sleep, gettimeofday, and interval timers? I'm looking for something that can work on the level of microseconds or hopefully even nanoseconds.

shruggy · 05-31-2020, 09:29 AM

The first hit on Google gives me this answer.

dugan · 05-31-2020, 12:46 PM

It's just the "time" module.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html

Turbocapitalist · 06-02-2020, 08:43 AM

Thanks. Reading more, the sleep module is supposed to do that. Using a script from a link above,

Code:

#!/usr/bin/python3

import time

# measure the smallest time delta by spinning until the time changes
def measure():
    t0 = time.time()
    t1 = t0
    while t1 == t0:
        t1 = time.time()
    return t1-t0

samples = [measure() for i in range(30)]

for s in samples:
    print(f'time delta: {s:.6f} seconds')

I can see that it is rather precise:

Code:

time delta: 0.000003 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000002 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000002 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds
time delta: 0.000001 seconds

I had expected a software problem but it looks like the trouble may lie with a peripheral device which responds sluggishly.