8.170 MCLOCK8 — Time function (64-bit)

Description:

Returns the number of clock ticks since the start of the process, based on the function clock(3) in the C standard library.

Warning: this intrinsic does not increase the range of the timing values over that returned by clock(3). On a system with a 32-bit clock(3), MCLOCK8 will return a 32-bit value, even though it is converted to a 64-bit INTEGER(8) value. That means overflows of the 32-bit value can still occur. Therefore, the values returned by this intrinsic might be or become negative or numerically less than previous values during a single run of the compiled program.

Standard:

GNU extension

Class:

Function

Syntax:

RESULT = MCLOCK8()

Return value:

The return value is a scalar of type INTEGER(8), equal to the number of clock ticks since the start of the process, or -1 if the system does not support clock(3).

See also:

CTIME, GMTIME, LTIME, MCLOCK, TIME8