How to send the output of %time to a file in Jupyter/IPython Notebook?

Question

The magic command %time produces the time it takes to execute a given code segment (statement) to the output cell in Jupyter Notebook. I would like this to be appended on to a specified file instead.

My objective is to find the runtime of an algorithm in different settings. I am able to automate the parameters of the algorithm, although not able to store the output of the %time (and %timeit ) magic command in a file for further processing.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Reposting as an answer:

%timeit (but not %time ) has a -o option which makes it return an object, so you can do:

res = %timeit -o foo()

Then you can get the numbers from res and write them to a file however you wish.

For more flexibility, use the timeit module in the standard library.