Evaluate the performance impact of cprintf

[dpo]

cprintf seems to be the only way to print colored strings in the command window. Some users report that it's slow. What is its performance impact exactly?

[schelian]

Just did a quick (& by no means exhaustive) test and it seems to add a second. Below are some timing result for calling disp vs cprintf 200 times; the test code is below it.

etime1 =

    0.0025


etime2 =

    1.1826


etime3 =

    1.1397

N = 200;

tic;
for i = 1:N
   disp( 'hi' );
end
etime1 = toc;

tic;
for i = 1:N
   cprintf( 'hi\n' );
end
etime2 = toc;

tic;
for i = 1:N
   cprintf( '*[1,0,0]', 'hi\n' );
end
etime3 = toc;

etime1
etime2
etime3

[dpo]

Well, does it add a second, or is it 473 times slower?

[schelian]

Yeah it's slower. If I increase N to 2000, I get the results below. Hopefully someone is doing much more computation than logging so an extra 10 seconds w/ cprintf would not be a bother. Perhaps cprintf can be an option?

etime1 =

    0.0176


etime2 =

   11.2543


etime3 =

   11.2563