Question

I’ve tried search without really finding an answer to this question that meets me requirements or explains it clearly enough.

I’m looking for a function or a way to implement a function that can retrieve the number of ticks or milliseconds in the same way that the timeGetTime() function does in windows.

I’m looking for a solution that only uses standard C++, no additional libraries or platform specifics (like timeGetTime() on windows or a linux equivalent; a multi-platform solution).

I’m trying to keep my code platform independent at the lower level of the library and I just want to know if anyone can tell me/point me to the way to put something together similar to timeGetTime().

Thanks

Update: I’m not necessarily looking for high performance and accuracy, I only need millisecond precision to see how much time has elapsed since I last checked.

Answer 1

You can use the ever so verbose <chrono> library added in C++11.

It has different types of clocks depending on what you want, with system_clock being the only one that can be used with time_t and high_resolution_clock being the one with the smallest tick possible.

Timing things is relatively simple with it, for example:

#include <iostream>
#include <chrono>

int main() {
    auto now = std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now();
    //do stuff here
    auto then = std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now();
    std::cout << std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::milliseconds>(then-now).count();
}