TIMER function

Purpose:

TIMER returns the number of seconds, one thousandth of a second resolution, since the current session of Windows started. This differs from other BASIC dialects which return the number of seconds since midnight.

RetVal = TIMER

Example:

DIM primes%
DIM start!
DIM finish!
DIM duration!

start! = TIMER

primes% = count_primes(99999)

finish! = TIMER

duration! = finish! - start!

PRINT "It took" & duration! & " seconds to calculate that"

PRINT "there are", primes%, " primes lower than 100,000."

FUNCTION count_primes (n%)

  DIM freq%
  freq = n - 1

  XFOR INTEGER i = 2 WHILE i <= n BY ++i
    XFOR INTEGER j = SQRT(i) WHILE j > 1 BY --j
      IF i % j = 0 THEN
        --freq
        EXIT XFOR
      END IF
    XNEXT
  XNEXT

  FUNCTION = freq

END FUNCTION

Result:

It took 0.07763672 seconds to calculate that
there are 9592 primes lower than 100,000.

BCX Console Sample Programs using the TIMER function.

• S40.bas
• S95.bas
• S135.bas

TIX_START ... TIX_NOW function

Purpose:

TIX_NOW returns a double precision count of milliseconds since TIX_START was called.

TIX_START
 Code block being timed.
 MilliSeconds = TIX_NOW

Remarks:

These were inspired by the PowerBasic TIX implementation. Actual resolution (precision) can vary by hardware and operating environment. Timing values in microseconds and even nanoseconds have been reported when running under Windows 10/11 on some business class computers and workstations.

TIX_START and TIX_NOW rely on the Win32 API function QueryPerformanceCounter to produce TIX_NOW's high resolution result.

Example:

TIX_START      ' Re-initializes two internal variables. 
DELAY 1       ' This could be any amount of code that you want to measure. 
PRINT TIX_NOW ' BCX knows that TIX_NOW is a double precision function. 
PAUSE