I used Python 3.3.2 to try this problem: http://projecteuler.net/problem=23 , and I got a correct answer.

When I wanted to check how long it took, I found something strange:
When I ran 23.py directly, it showed that it took about 13s. But if I use timeit module, it showed that it only took about 9s! I have tried these for some times, in both Ubuntu 12.10 and Windows 8, I don't understand why timeit will make the same code run faster.


Thanks.

I used Python 3.3.2 to try this problem: http://projecteuler.net/problem=23 , and I got a correct answer.

When I wanted to check how long it took, I found something strange:
When I ran 23.py directly, it showed that it took about 13s. But if I use timeit module, it showed that it only took about 9s! I have tried these for some times, in both Ubuntu 12.10 and Windows 8, I don't understand why timeit will make the same code run faster.


Thanks.

I think if you use timeit then the code is wrapped inside a function before it is compiled.  This means that your code can mostly use faster local lookups rather than global lookups.

I did some tests, Richard Oudkerk (sbt) is right. Thanks a lot.

By the way, this kind of question is more suited to the python-list mailing list (where you will in the general case get a faster answer anyway :)