[Numpy-discussion] Possible roadmap addendum: building better text file readers

[Francesc Alted]

On Feb 26, 2012, at 1:16 PM, Warren Weckesser wrote:
> For anyone benchmarking software like this, be sure to clear the disk cache before each run.  In linux:
> 
> $ sync
> $ sudo sh -c "echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"
> 

It is also a good idea to run a disk-cache enabled test too, just to better see how things can be improved in your code.  Disk subsystem is pretty slow, and during development you can get much better feedback by looking at load times from memory, not from disk (also, tests run much faster, so you can save a lot of devel time).

> In Mac OSX:
> 
> $ purge

Now that I switched to a Mac, this is good to know.  Thanks!

-- Francesc Alted