Editing Algorithmic efficiency (section)

====Practice====
A [[benchmark (computing)|benchmark]] can be used to assess the performance of an algorithm in practice. Many programming languages have an available function which provides [[CPU time]] usage. For long-running algorithms the elapsed time could also be of interest. Results should generally be averaged over several tests.

Run-based profiling can be very sensitive to hardware configuration and the possibility of other programs or tasks running at the same time in a [[multi-processing]] and [[multi-programming]] environment.

This sort of test also depends heavily on the selection of a particular programming language, compiler, and compiler options, so algorithms being compared must all be implemented under the same conditions.