Testing Efficiency?

[Geminias]

What's the best way to compare efficiencies of different algorithms? I tried the "time" command which I believe is the GNU/time(1) command built into bash but the results are staggered for multiple runs of the same program... Also I don't know how to adjust the precision and frankly the documentation both in man and google sucks.

[Ultrahex]

Testing multiple cases using the programming languages timer, or computer internal timer/clock cycles for the program. Also checking how many times it iterates through in the program is another way to check efficient such as big O notation.

[Geminias]

yeah cool but how? (what program? whats the command?)

[PaulButler]

I think Ultrahex is talking about programming the timer into the program, something like this:

code:

// pseudocode c = current time; for (i = 0; i < 1000; i++)      function_you_want_to_test(arguments, for, this_function); avgtime = (current time - c) / 1000;