Precise timer, ticks

Is there some precise timer (CLI command) around, giving timedifferences in ticks?
If not how could it be written?

By ticks, do you mean intuiticks (about 9 ticks per second), or DOS ticks (I think 50 per second) or what?

By precise it sounds more like you would like to have microseconds. How about the UNIX utime stuff?

I was thinking of Amiga DOS ticks 50 per second, but the idea is to time code snippets, without having to find out how many times you have to repeat them to have a signifciant number (say 2 significant digits)

Ok. So you simply want to read time repeatadly and stop looping when you have run like 1 second or so? I'm sure there are ways but I have never done it so I can't answer from the top of my head.

Isn't there some TimeOfDay or DateTime function or something in dos.library perhaps?

@JosDuchIt
Quote:
I doubt if it's possible to get exact timing with a CLI command. Remember, Amiga is multitasking and the timing command and/or your code snippet could be paused for task switching by the OS.

@Deniil

I was not thinking to use loops, but to avoid them.
Using an interpreted language i can time using the system time, which has a precision of 1 sec.

However the OS, i read, maintains a system time in ticks.
So i just wondered if i can use this. If somebody has made a CLI command getting it, it might not be fully usable due to multitasking, i still would be interested; I would try to use it right now. I am interested in the source too of course (or snippet of anybody having used the corresponding OS4 call), but then i'l have to take up C again, which i can't before fall.

Here is a little program to measure time differences:
http://mitglied.multimania.de/thomasrapp/download/PreciseTime.lha
(see TimeTest script for usage example).
Resolution is micro seconds.

@Thomas,

a big thank you, exactly what i need.

Forgot to mention that it's 68k yet. I could make an OS4-native version when I come home tonight.

@JosDushIt

A while back I needed a way to time how long some commands took and wrote http://os4depot.net/share/utility/shell/timer.lha

It tries to be as accurate as possible and consequently it doesn't report the result in Ticks but you could make that happen by modifying the source code a bit.

@thomas
On OS4 version seems like a good idea
@alexC
Thanks too: works OK, the ticks are not important ,i just started with the idea that this had more chances to be available.

Quote:

Sorry, I almost forgot about it. I now made an OS4 version and also added the option to use ticks instead of microseconds.

The link is still the same as above.

@Thomas

Nice, thank you

In a shell type this;

Prompt "%N.%S <%E>"

You will now get the command execution time shown
in the prompt string when the command returns.

If you want it permanently, set it up in the s:shell-startup.

@collinw
sure an interesting thing to know. thanks
The other solutions have the advantage, that you can include them in a script, which was what i was looking for.

wait 5
echo $_RunTime

@colinw
Has that variable always been available in AmigaOS or is it new to OS4??
Is there a way to list all the local variables from the command line (for future reference).??

Type set and setenv without arguments on Shell.

(Btw. I'd expect to get a list of all variables with get instead of set.)

@TSK
Duh! It's in the docs. The variables are listed too. I was never aware of the "Viewer" variable either. That might be useful in a script.