I'd like to know how long it takes a user to enter an input that I record with raw_input().
I.e. does it take them 1 second or 10 seconds to enter something on the command line.
Is there an established way of doing this, or would I need to invent my own way of doing this?
If all you need is second resolution (not millisecond/microsecond), you can surround the code with time.time() to get the beginning/ending times, then subtract.
import time
start = time.time()
in_str = raw_input("Enter the thing:")
end = time.time()
elapsed = end-start
print "That took you " + str(elapsed) + " seconds. Man, you're slow."
If you want it at a greater resolution, take a look at the code presented here: python time(milli seconds) calculation