[NOTE] defer timing trick

Example of how to use defer in golang as a crude way of measure execution time. Start by defining the timeit function. The function just prints the duration from the time given by start.

func timeit(start time.Time, text string) {
    log.Info("PERF [%s] [%s]", text, time.Since(start))
}

Using the defer keyword we can make timeit execute directly after the function that we want to measure. Passing time.Now() as argument gives us a timer that measures execution time for the function body.

func timedFunction() {
    defer timeit(time.Now())
    time.Sleep(500 * time.Millisecond)
}

Calling timedFunction() should print

PERF [timedFunction] [500ms]