Question

I have this code:

for i in 1 .. 10 do
    let (tree, interval) = time (fun () -> insert [12.; 6. + 1.0] exampletree 128.)
    printfn "insertion time: %A" interval.TotalMilliseconds
    ()

with the time function defined as

let time f =
    let start = DateTime.Now
    let res = f ()
    let finish = DateTime.Now
    (res, finish - start)

the function insert is not relevant here, other than the fact that it doesn’t employ mutation and thus returns the same value every time.

I get the results:

insertion time: 218.75
insertion time: 0.0
insertion time: 0.0
insertion time: 0.0
insertion time: 0.0
insertion time: 0.0
insertion time: 0.0
insertion time: 0.0
insertion time: 0.0
insertion time: 0.0

The question is why does the code calculate the result only once (from the insertion time, the result is always correct and equal)? Also, how to force the program to do computation multiple times (I need that for profiling purposes)?

Edit: Jared has supplied the right answer. Now that I know what to look for, I can get the stopwatch code from a timeit function for F#

I had the following results:

insertion time: 243.4247
insertion time: 0.0768
insertion time: 0.0636
insertion time: 0.0617
insertion time: 0.065
insertion time: 0.0564
insertion time: 0.062
insertion time: 0.069
insertion time: 0.0656
insertion time: 0.0553

Answer 1

F# does not do automatic memoization of your functions. In this case memo-ization would be incorrect. Even though you don’t mutate items directly you are accessing a mutable value (DateTime.Now) from within your function. Memoizing that or a function accessing it would be a mistake since it can change from call to call.

What you’re seeing here is an effect of the .Net JIT. The first time this is run the function f() is JIT’d and produces a noticable delay. The other times it’s already JIT’d and executes a time which is smaller than the granularity of DateTime

One way to prove this is to use a more granular measuring class like StopWatch. This will show the function executes many times.