Python: is there a way to import a variable using timeit.timeit()?

Question

Suppose I have some function that takes an array and changes every element to be 0.

def function(array):
    for i in range(0,len(array)):
        array[i] = 0
return array

I want to test how long this function takes to run on a random array, which I wish to generate OUTSIDE of the timeit test. In other words, I don't want to include the time it takes to generate the array into the time.

I first store a random array in a variable x and do:

timeit.timeit("function(x)",setup="from __main__ import function")

But this gives me an error: NameError: global name 'x' is not defined

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Import x from __main__ as well:

timeit.timeit("function(x)", setup="from __main__ import function, x")

Just like function, x is a name in the __main__ module, and can be imported into the timeit setup.