Question

Could somebody be so kind as to point me towards some erlang code which allows me to time how long it takes to run certain pieces of code?

I havent seen an erlang library where this is available?

Answer 1

You can use the erlang:statistics function.

This is used in Joe Armstrong’s Programming Erlang book (p141).

e.g.

yourfun() ->

    statistics(runtime),
    statistics(wall_clock),

    % your code here

    {_, Time1} = statistics(runtime),
    {_, Time2} = statistics(wall_clock),
    U1 = Time1 * 1000,
    U2 = Time2 * 1000,
    io:format("Code time=~p (~p) microseconds~n",
    [U1,U2]).

In this example U1 is the CPU time and U2 is the total elapsed time (wall clock time).