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Date:      Tue, 28 May 2002 21:19:47 +0100
From:      Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at>
To:        Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Cc:        Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at>, freebsd-standards@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: clock(3) standardization
Message-ID:  <20020528211947.A20393@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
In-Reply-To: <20020529051638.F22456-100000@gamplex.bde.org>; from bde@zeta.org.au on Wed, May 29, 2002 at 05:56:17AM %2B1000
References:  <20020528191650.A8322@chiark.greenend.org.uk> <20020529051638.F22456-100000@gamplex.bde.org>

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On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 05:56:17AM +1000, Bruce Evans wrote:
> On Tue, 28 May 2002, Tony Finch wrote:
> 
> > I noticed that clock(3) currently violates a requirement of POSIX
> > 2001 (that CLOCKS_PER_SEC is 1000000) and that the various archs
> > are inconsistent and somtimes different from what is in clocks(7).
> 
> That is only in a (broken) XSI extension.  "Fixing" this would mainly
> break binary compatibility since it would change from one historical
> wrong value to another (128 -> 1000000).  The first C standard got this
> right by permitting it to be a runtime parameter.  This value should
> be <frequency of kernel timecounter> which may be a few billion on
> current machines.  This requires clock_t to be much larger than uint32_t
> so that it can represent 24 hours in ticks.  clock_t should probably be
> double.

But to do this would require changing the implementation to use something
other than getrusage() to implement clock() and times().  Wouldn't it be
better to add a non-standard interface for getting the higher resolution
value, instead of being non-compliant?

There's currently a discussion on comp.std.c about relaxing the C99
definition of CLOCKS_PER_SEC back to the C89 definition.

> I actually prefer to let this rot and tell everyone to use clock_gettime().

We currently tell everyone to use getrusage().

Tony.
-- 
f.a.n.finch <dot@dotat.at> http://dotat.at/
SOUTH BISCAY: NORTHWESTERLY BECOMING VARIABLE 3 OR 4. MAINLY FAIR. GOOD.

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