Re: [boost] [Timer] Inconsistent behaviour

Subject: Re: [boost] [Timer] Inconsistent behaviour
From: Bjørn Roald (bjorn_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-10-29 15:15:07

Jordans, R. wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I was looking at Boost.Timer and I noticed that it shows different results when it's used in a threaded program on Windows or Unix machines. A closer inspection revealed that it uses clock() to do it's timings.
>
> Digging a bit deeper I found that clock() is specified differently on Windows than it is in my Linux man-page. On windows it counts 'wall clock' time, basically what I'd expect from a class named timer but on Linux it counts CPU time. Thus it will give the result for completely different concepts of time elapsed depending on my system.
>
> Two questions; 1) is there a good way to solve this,

If you want a portable wall-clock timer and a simple Boost.Timer like 
interface you can just copy the boost/timer.hpp header file into your 
own namespace and rewrite it to use boost/date_time/posix_time  stuff 
instead of ::clock().  I have done that  before and it was really 
simple.  There is a  BOOST_ALL_NO_LIB macro you can define  before  you 
include the date_time headers so you avoid creating dependencies to 
anything but the header files in boost.

-- 
Bjorn