The Benchmark module provides methods for benchmarking Ruby code, giving detailed reports on the time taken for each task.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'benchmark'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install benchmark

The Benchmark module provides methods to measure and report the time used to execute Ruby code.

Measure the time to construct the string given by the expression "a"*1_000_000_000:

require 'benchmark'
puts Benchmark.measure { "a"*1_000_000_000 }

On my machine (OSX 10.8.3 on i5 1.7 GHz) this generates:

0.350000   0.400000   0.750000 (  0.835234)

This report shows the user CPU time, system CPU time, the sum of the user and system CPU times, and the elapsed real time. The unit of time is seconds.

Do some experiments sequentially using the #bm method:

require 'benchmark'
n = 5000000
Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report { for i in 1..n; a = "1"; end }
  x.report { n.times do   ; a = "1"; end }
  x.report { 1.upto(n) do ; a = "1"; end }
end

The result:

    user     system      total        real
1.010000   0.000000   1.010000 (  1.014479)
1.000000   0.000000   1.000000 (  0.998261)
0.980000   0.000000   0.980000 (  0.981335)

Continuing the previous example, put a label in each report:

require 'benchmark'
n = 5000000
Benchmark.bm(7) do |x|
  x.report("for:")   { for i in 1..n; a = "1"; end }
  x.report("times:") { n.times do   ; a = "1"; end }
  x.report("upto:")  { 1.upto(n) do ; a = "1"; end }
end

The result:

              user     system      total        real
for:      1.010000   0.000000   1.010000 (  1.015688)
times:    1.000000   0.000000   1.000000 (  1.003611)
upto:     1.030000   0.000000   1.030000 (  1.028098)

The times for some benchmarks depend on the order in which items are run. These differences are due to the cost of memory allocation and garbage collection. To avoid these discrepancies, the #bmbm method is provided. For example, to compare ways to sort an array of floats:

require 'benchmark'
array = (1..1000000).map { rand }
Benchmark.bmbm do |x|
  x.report("sort!") { array.dup.sort! }
  x.report("sort")  { array.dup.sort  }
end

The result:

Rehearsal -----------------------------------------
sort!   1.490000   0.010000   1.500000 (  1.490520)
sort    1.460000   0.000000   1.460000 (  1.463025)
-------------------------------- total: 2.960000sec
            user     system      total        real
sort!   1.460000   0.000000   1.460000 (  1.460465)
sort    1.450000   0.010000   1.460000 (  1.448327)

Report statistics of sequential experiments with unique labels, using the #benchmark method:

require 'benchmark'
include Benchmark         # we need the CAPTION and FORMAT constants
n = 5000000
Benchmark.benchmark(CAPTION, 7, FORMAT, ">total:", ">avg:") do |x|
  tf = x.report("for:")   { for i in 1..n; a = "1"; end }
  tt = x.report("times:") { n.times do   ; a = "1"; end }
  tu = x.report("upto:")  { 1.upto(n) do ; a = "1"; end }
  [tf+tt+tu, (tf+tt+tu)/3]
end

The result:

             user     system      total        real
for:      0.950000   0.000000   0.950000 (  0.952039)
times:    0.980000   0.000000   0.980000 (  0.984938)
upto:     0.950000   0.000000   0.950000 (  0.946787)
>total:   2.880000   0.000000   2.880000 (  2.883764)
>avg:     0.960000   0.000000   0.960000 (  0.961255)

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ruby/benchmark.