title: What exactly are fractional seconds returned by Python time.perf_counter()?
body: <p>This is probably a dumb/obvious question, but just want to make sure my hunches are correct.</p>
  
  <p>I'm doing some basic performance timing in a Python3 script using time.perf_counter() like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>start = time.perf_counter()
  # some time consuming operation here
  end = time.perf_counter()
  elapsed = end - start
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I'll get back values like 9.774 or 36.903 (to many more decimal places, of course). I'm assuming that larger numbers = more time elapsed, but what exactly do these numbers mean? E.g. is 1.23 fractional seconds just 1 second and .23 fractions of a second</p>