How do I use Criterion for benchmarking in Rust?

How do I use Criterion for benchmarking in Rust?

Criterion is a powerful benchmarking library for Rust. First, add it to your Cargo.toml file under [dev-dependencies] like this:

[dev-dependencies]
criterion = "^0.3"

Then, create a new file in the benches directory, for example, my_benchmark.rs. You can define benchmarks like this:

use criterion::{black_box, criterion_group, criterion_main, Criterion};

fn my_function() {
    // Your code here
}

fn benchmark(c: &mut Criterion) {
    c.bench_function("my_function", |b| b.iter(|| my_function()));
}

criterion_group!(benches, benchmark);
criterion_main!(benches);

What do I do after writing the benchmark?

After writing your benchmark, you can run it using the command cargo bench. This will compile your benchmarks and execute them, providing you with detailed performance metrics.

Can I compare multiple functions in one benchmark?

Yes, you can compare multiple functions by adding more benchmarks in the same benchmark function. Just call c.bench_function for each function you want to compare.

How can I visualize the benchmark results?

Criterion automatically generates HTML reports for your benchmarks. After running cargo bench, you can find the results in the target/criterion directory, where you can open the HTML files in your browser to visualize the performance data.