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clock(3c) [opensolaris man page]

clock(3C)						   Standard C Library Functions 						 clock(3C)

NAME
clock - report CPU time used SYNOPSIS
#include <time.h> clock_t clock(void); DESCRIPTION
The clock() function returns the amount of CPU time (in microseconds) used since the first call to clock() in the calling process. The time reported is the sum of the user and system times of the calling process and its terminated child processes for which it has executed the wait(3C) function, the pclose(3C) function, or the system(3C) function. RETURN VALUES
Dividing the value returned by clock() by the constant CLOCKS_PER_SEC, defined in the <time.h> header, will give the time in seconds. If the process time used is not available or cannot be represented, clock returns the value (clock_t) -1. USAGE
The value returned by clock() is defined in microseconds for compatibility with systems that have CPU clocks with much higher resolution. Because of this, the value returned will wrap around after accumulating only 2147 seconds of CPU time (about 36 minutes). ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Interface Stability |Standard | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |MT-Level |MT-Safe | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
times(2), popen(3C), system(3C), wait(3C), attributes(5), standards(5) SunOS 5.11 24 Jul 2002 clock(3C)

Check Out this Related Man Page

TIMES(2)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							  TIMES(2)

NAME
times - get process times SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/times.h> clock_t times(struct tms *buf); DESCRIPTION
The times() function stores the current process times in the struct tms that buf points to. The struct tms is as defined in <sys/times.h>: struct tms { clock_t tms_utime; /* user time */ clock_t tms_stime; /* system time */ clock_t tms_cutime; /* user time of children */ clock_t tms_cstime; /* system time of children */ }; The tms_utime field contains the CPU time spent executing instructions of the calling process. The tms_stime field contains the CPU time spent in the system while executing tasks on behalf of the calling process. The tms_cutime field contains the sum of the tms_utime and tms_cutime values for all waited-for terminated children. The tms_cstime field contains the sum of the tms_stime and tms_cstime values for all waited-for terminated children. Times for terminated children (and their descendants) is added in at the moment wait(2) or waitpid(2) returns their process ID. In particu- lar, times of grandchildren that the children did not wait for are never seen. All times reported are in clock ticks. RETURN VALUE
The function times returns the number of clock ticks that have elapsed since an arbitrary point in the past. For Linux this point is the moment the system was booted. This return value may overflow the possible range of type clock_t. On error, (clock_t) -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately. NOTES
The number of clock ticks per second can be obtained using sysconf(_SC_CLK_TCK); In POSIX-1996 the symbol CLK_TCK (defined in <time.h>) is mentioned as obsolescent. It is obsolete now. On Linux, if the disposition of SIGCHLD is set to SIG_IGN then the times of terminated children are automatically included in the tms_cstime and tms_cutime fields, although POSIX 1003.1-2001 says that this should only happen if the calling process wait()s on its chil- dren. Note that clock(3) returns values of type clock_t that are not measured in clock ticks but in CLOCKS_PER_SEC. CONFORMING TO
SVr4, SVID, POSIX, X/OPEN, BSD 4.3 HISTORICAL NOTES
SVr1-3 returns long and the struct members are of type time_t although they store clock ticks, not seconds since the epoch. V7 used long for the struct members, because it had no type time_t yet. On older systems the number of clock ticks per second is given by the variable HZ. SEE ALSO
time(1), getrusage(2), wait(2), clock(3), sysconf(3) Linux 2002-06-14 TIMES(2)
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