Question

I have the following code and I wanted to create a class that encapsulates the timer but the trouble I’m having is using the timer after declaring the class. I posted another block of code to show an example of how I want to use the timer.

double diffclock(clock_t clock1,clock_t clock2)
{
    double diffticks=clock1-clock2;
    double diffms=(diffticks*1000)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
    return diffms;
}
void some_function()
{   
    clock_t begin = clock();

    //do something
    clock_t end=clock();
    cout << "Time elapsed: " << double(diffclock(end,begin)) << " ms"<< endl;

}

this is the header file

#ifndef SPECIALCLOCK_H
#define SPECIALCLOCK_H
#include <ctime>

class specialclock
{
    private:

    public:

    specialclock(){}
    ~specialclock(){}
    double diffclock(clock_t clock1,clock_t clock2);
};
double specialclock::diffclock(clock_t clock1,clock_t clock2)
{
    double diffticks=clock1-clock2;
    double diffms=(diffticks*1000)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
    return diffms;
}
#endif

And this the the main file

#include "specialclock.h"

int main()
{

   specialclock timer;

//how would I use the timer here?

   return 0;
}

Answer 1

The way you have your class set up doesn’t really make sense. I have a simple timer class that works like this:

Timer MyTimer;

// Do stuff...

std::cout << "Execution took " << MyTimer.Seconds() << " seconds." << std::endl;

Is this what you’re looking for? If so, my class is set up like the following:

class Timer
{
    std::clock_t ReferencePoint;

    public:

    Timer()
    {
        // Set the reference point to the current time.
    }

    double Seconds()
    {
        // Return the difference between the current time and the
        // reference point.
    }
};

This is simplified for the sake of clarity. You can see my full source here and here.