Getting "global name 'foo' is not defined" with Python's timeit

Change this line:

t = timeit.Timer("foo()")

To this:

t = timeit.Timer("foo()", "from __main__ import foo")

Check out the link you provided at the very bottom.

To give the timeit module access to functions you define, you can pass a setup parameter which contains an import statement:

I just tested it on my machine and it worked with the changes.

With Python 3, you can use globals=globals()

t = timeit.Timer("foo()", globals=globals())

From the documentation:

Another option is to pass globals() to the globals parameter, which will cause the code to be executed within your current global namespace. This can be more convenient than individually specifying imports

You can try this hack:

import timeit

def foo():
    print 'bar'

def dotime():
    t = timeit.Timer("foo()")
    time = t.timeit(1)
    print "took %fs\n" % (time,)

import __builtin__
__builtin__.__dict__.update(locals())

dotime()

t = timeit.Timer("foo()", "from __main__ import foo")

Since timeit doesn't have your stuff in scope.