How to use this code

Not surprisingly, Stopwatch is a class representing a stopwatch.

    Stopwatch swatch();

A Stopwatch object can be used to measure execution time of code, algorithms, etc., the Stopwatch can
be initialized in two time-taking modes, CPU time and real time:

    watch.set_mode(REAL_TIME);

CPU time is the time spent by the processor on a certain piece of code, while real time is the real
amount of time taken by a certain piece of code to execute (i.e. in general if you are doing hard work
such as image or video editing on a different process the measured time will probably increase).

How does it work? Basically, one wraps the code to be measured with the following method calls:

    swatch.start("My astounding algorithm");
    // Hic est code
    swatch.stop("My astounding algorithm");

A string representing the code ID is provided so that nested portions of code can be profiled separately:

    swatch.start("My astounding algorithm");

    swatch.start("My astounding algorithm - Super smart init");
    // Initialization
    swatch->stop("My astounding algorithm - Super smart init");

    swatch.start("My astounding algorithm - Main loop");
    // Loop
    swatch.stop("My astounding algorithm - Main loop");

    swatch.stop("My astounding algorithm");

Note: ID strings can be whatever you like, in the previous example I have used "My astounding algorithm - *"
only to enforce the fact that the measured code portions are part of My astounding algorithm, but there's no
connection between the three measurements.

If the code for a certain task is scattered through different files or portions of the same file one can use 
the start-pause-stop method:

    swatch.start("Setup");
    // First part of setup
    swatch.pause("Setup");

    swatch.start("Main logic");
    // Main logic
    swatch.stop("Main logic");

    swatch.start("Setup");
    // Cleanup (part of the setup)
    swatch.stop("Setup");

Finally, to report the results of the measurements just run:

    swatch.report("Code ID");

Thou can also provide an additional std::ostream& parameter to report() to redirect the logging on a different
output. Also, you can use the get_total/min/max/average_time() methods to get the individual numeric data, without
all the details of the logging. You can also extend Stopwatch to implement your own logging syntax.

To report all the measurements:

    swatch.report_all();

Same as above, you can redirect the output by providing a std::ostream& parameter.  

License

See LICENSE file.

Drop a line

If you use this code for your software, please let me know with a mail message at tunnuz@gmail.com, or not.