Easily measure elapsed time

Question

I am trying to use time() to measure various points of my program.

What I don\'t understand is why the values in the before and after are the same? I understand thi

Answer 1

C++ std::chrono has a clear benefit of being cross-platform. However, it also introduces a significant overhead compared to POSIX clock_gettime(). On my Linux box all std::chrono::xxx_clock::now() flavors perform roughly the same:

std::chrono::system_clock::now()
std::chrono::steady_clock::now()
std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now()

Though POSIX clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &time) should be same as steady_clock::now() but it is more than x3 times faster!

Here is my test, for completeness.

#include 
#include 
#include 

void print_timediff(const char* prefix, const struct timespec& start, const 
struct timespec& end)
{
    double milliseconds = end.tv_nsec >= start.tv_nsec
                        ? (end.tv_nsec - start.tv_nsec) / 1e6 + (end.tv_sec - start.tv_sec) * 1e3
                        : (start.tv_nsec - end.tv_nsec) / 1e6 + (end.tv_sec - start.tv_sec - 1) * 1e3;
    printf("%s: %lf milliseconds\n", prefix, milliseconds);
}

int main()
{
    int i, n = 1000000;
    struct timespec start, end;

    // Test stopwatch
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &start);
    for (i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
        struct timespec dummy;
        clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &dummy);
    }
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &end);
    print_timediff("clock_gettime", start, end);

    // Test chrono system_clock
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &start);
    for (i = 0; i < n; ++i)
        auto dummy = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &end);
    print_timediff("chrono::system_clock::now", start, end);

    // Test chrono steady_clock
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &start);
    for (i = 0; i < n; ++i)
        auto dummy = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &end);
    print_timediff("chrono::steady_clock::now", start, end);

    // Test chrono high_resolution_clock
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &start);
    for (i = 0; i < n; ++i)
        auto dummy = std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now();
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &end);
    print_timediff("chrono::high_resolution_clock::now", start, end);

    return 0;
}

And this is the output I get when compiled with gcc7.2 -O3:

clock_gettime: 24.484926 milliseconds
chrono::system_clock::now: 85.142108 milliseconds
chrono::steady_clock::now: 87.295347 milliseconds
chrono::high_resolution_clock::now: 84.437838 milliseconds