Writing benchmarks

Similar to a unit test, benchmarks are stored in the _test.go files, but these functions start with Benchmark instead of Test. A benchmark is given a number N where you repeat the same operation N times while the runtime is measuring the performance.

How to do it...

1. Create a benchmark function in one of the _test.go files. The following example is in the sort_test.go file:

   func BenchmarkSortAscending(b *testing.B) {

2. Do the setup before the benchmark loop, otherwise, you will be benchmarking the setup code as well, not the actual algorithm:

   input := []time.Time{
     time.Date(2023, 2, 1, 12, 8, 37, 0, time.Local),
     time.Date(2021, 5, 6, 9, 48, 11, 0, time.Local),
     time.Date(2022, 11, 13, 17, 13, 54, 0, time.Local),
     time.Date(2022, 6, 23, 22, 29, 28, 0, time.Local),
     time.Date(2023, 3, 17, 4, 5, 9, 0, time.Local),
   }

3. Write a for loop iterating b.N times and perform the operation that will be benchmarked...