you dont measure single run, you measure multiple runs using the "timeit" module (for me 1000 repeats was about right).
here are some results which i recorded when i was implementing Sudoku solver (on AMD Athlon 1.25GHz, using the sample shown on www.sudoku.com front page): brute: 1000 for 83 sec smart: 1000 for 21 sec brute, bitset: 1000 for 29 sec smart, bitset: 1000 for 7.0 sec smart, bit+que: 1000 for 5.3 sec so you see the algorithm makes big difference... and so does the data structure used. i got 15x speed-up that way. i guess i can claim that my solver runs the sample for 5.3s/1000 = 5.3 ms! a friend was also implementing sudoku - this time in C - and his program solves the sample 10000 times for 3.4sec (i.e. for 0.34ms) on slightly faster machine - so let's say his **highly optimized** C code is about 10x faster than mine. - Nas -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
