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Easily measure elapsed time

Asked 2010-05-11T06:04:29.797
433

I am trying to use time() to measure various points of my program.

What I don't understand is why the values in the before and after are the same? I understand this is not the best way to profile my program, I just want to see how long something take. 

printf("**MyProgram::before time= %ld\n", time(NULL));

doSomthing();
doSomthingLong();

printf("**MyProgram::after time= %ld\n", time(NULL));

I have tried:

struct timeval diff, startTV, endTV;

gettimeofday(&startTV, NULL); 

doSomething();
doSomethingLong();

gettimeofday(&endTV, NULL); 

timersub(&endTV, &startTV, &diff);

printf("**time taken = %ld %ld\n", diff.tv_sec, diff.tv_usec);

How do I read a result of **time taken = 0 26339? Does that mean 26,339 nanoseconds = 26.3 msec?

What about **time taken = 4 45025, does that mean 4 seconds and 25 msec?

c++ c linux time measurement
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3 Answers

59

As I can see from your question, it looks like you want to know the elapsed time after execution of some piece of code. I guess you would be comfortable to see the results in second(s). If so, try using difftime() function as shown below. Hope this solves your problem. 

#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>

time_t start,end;
time (&start);
.
.
.
<your code>
.
.
.
time (&end);
double dif = difftime (end,start);
printf ("Elasped time is %.2lf seconds.", dif );
answered 2010-05-11T07:57:33.573
31

Windows only: (The Linux tag was added after I posted this answer)

You can use GetTickCount() to get the number of milliseconds that have elapsed since the system was started.

long int before = GetTickCount();

// Perform time-consuming operation

long int after = GetTickCount();
answered 2010-05-11T06:22:02.880
13

the time(NULL) function will return the number of seconds elapsed since 01/01/1970 at 00:00. And because, that function is called at different time in your program, it will always be different Time in C++

answered 2010-05-11T06:08:13.690

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