How to benchmark Swift code execution?

Question

Is there a way/software to give precise time needed to execute a block of code written in Swift, other than the following?

let date_start = NSDate()

// Code to be executed 

println("\(-date_start.timeIntervalSinceNow)")

Answer 1

If you just want a standalone timing function for a block of code, I use the following Swift helper functions:

func printTimeElapsedWhenRunningCode(title:String, operation:()->()) {
    let startTime = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent()
    operation()
    let timeElapsed = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent() - startTime
    print("Time elapsed for \(title): \(timeElapsed) s.")
}

func timeElapsedInSecondsWhenRunningCode(operation: ()->()) -> Double {
    let startTime = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent()
    operation()
    let timeElapsed = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent() - startTime
    return Double(timeElapsed)
}

The former will log out the time required for a given section of code, with the latter returning that as a float. As an example of the first variant:

printTimeElapsedWhenRunningCode(title:"map()") {
    let resultArray1 = randoms.map { pow(sin(CGFloat($0)), 10.0) }
}

will log out something like:

Time elapsed for map(): 0.0617449879646301 s

Be aware that Swift benchmarks will vary heavily based on the level of optimization you select, so this may only be useful for relative comparisons of Swift execution time. Even that may change on a per-beta-version basis.