Abstract: The generation of intense highspeed optical pulses has made possible a wide range of new experiments designed to study the characteristics of the optical pulse itself and the interaction of light with matter. For the quantitative and accurate measurement of the optical pulse parameters is essential, and it is the purpose of this paper to review the principles and characteristics of most methods currently available for measuring highspeed optical pulses (from nanosecond to attosecond), including electrooptical streak cameras, high speed pulses sampling, secondharmonic generation, frequencyresolved optical gating and spectral phase interferometry for direct electricfield reconstruction. Moreover, the recent rapid developments of these methods are also introduced. Some suggestions