Re^3: Time modules

The documentation is very confusing, but between reading the source code and rereading the docs, here's how it works:

min is the starting unit, e.g. 0
max is the ending unit, e.g. 100 or 1000
report($format, $cur) - prints out how much has been done so far using the format $format. $cur is the number of units consumed so far, i.e. the number of files or number of Gb examined so far
time estimates are calculated by comparing the lapsed time to $cur/($max - $min) and scaling up appropriately.

So the usage would be something like:

create a progress object with appropriate min/max
in a loop,
1. do N units of work
2. after each N units have been completed, call report($format, $cur) to report how many units have been completed so far

BTW - I also noted the docs show report like this report(format, [current item]). I'm not quite sure what was intended by that. According to the source code, the call should look like this: report($format, $currentItem)

Best, beth

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Re^4: Time modules by Marshall (Canon) on Feb 24, 2009 at 21:52 UTC
Beth is on it! I would add that be careful as any kind of user display is a VERY expensive operation - more expensive than even opening a file. I usually put a thin layer that counts N units of work. This is called after every work unit. When N units are reached (or time window, etc), this routine calls the UI. The main point here is that the UI is SLOW. If say you are doing 10,000 things and have a progress bar with 0-100%, there will be a HUGE performance difference between just calling that UI 100 times vs 10,000 times! If your program makes progress very quickly, do a test case just to see how fast the progress can go from 0% to 100% without doing any "real" work. You will be amazed. In this type of case, the CPU power required to calculate the time since last display will be dwarfed by the CPU power required to actually display something. This is true on command line as well as GUI. Some folks think that command line display is fast, but that is not true. In some cases this can be even slower than a GUI display. I hate this Microsoft file copy display. It it just a picture and is a separate process unrelated to the actual work being done. If you have a choice, always display something that is related to the amount of work that has been done, not just a "I am working" message.	[reply]
Re^4: Time modules by mikejones (Scribe) on Feb 25, 2009 at 03:27 UTC
I made some progress, however I was not sure what you meant in number 2. Since I am using file find, my units would be every file greater than 25Mb for example. `<snip> else { my ( $size_input ) = pop @_ ; if ( $^O !~ /(?:)dec\w+/i ) { my ( $dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid ) ; (( $dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid ) = lstat($_) ) && ( $dev >= 0 ) && !( $File::Find::prune \|= ($dev != $File::Find::topdev ) ) +&& ( int(((-s _) + 1023) / 1024 ) >= $size_input ) && push ((@large_files), $name) ; $number_of_files = scalar @large_files ; $timer->restart( min => 0, max => $number_of_files ) ; print $timer->report( "%45b %p\r", 10 ) ; }` [download] ### The output is not entirely accurate. For a large filesystem this is painted across my screen and counts down. For smaller filesystems, numbers are not calculated quickly enough and all I see is n/a. For mid-size filesystems all I see is 100% ### `##################################........... 76.9% #########################.................... 55.6% "output of the file find hereafter"` [download] In the code `print $timer->report( "%45b %p\r", 10 ) ;` does 10 represent % points to increment or decrement in his calculations? thank you	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^5: Time modules by ELISHEVA (Prior) on Feb 25, 2009 at 15:09 UTC
Neither. It means number of points completed so far. So assuming you are updating your progress bar after each 10 files and you had 50 files total, you'd set min=0, max=50 and each successive call would be something like this: `print $timer->report( "%45b %p\r", 10 ); #10 out of 50 files print $timer->report( "%45b %p\r", 20 ); #20 out of 50 files print $timer->report( "%45b %p\r", 30 ); #30 out of 50 files` [download] Best, beth	[reply] [d/l]
Re^6: Time modules by mikejones (Scribe) on Feb 25, 2009 at 15:36 UTC
Hi Beth, So you are saying I should make this print timer call three times in my loop? My max is number of files which of course varies from filesystem to filesystem. thank you	[reply]