indeed, I was unable to use the above for this until MacPerl 5.6.1 came along. I finally got some tuits and added the code but I suspect it's still not as efficient as it *could* be, though I feel I got pretty darned close. There is some overhead associated with the process in any case, so I'm not sure if it's possible to batten down the hatches any tighter than they already are.
I've posted it to perl.module-authors, and perl.fwp but so far have received no replies. :/ I'm starting to feel invisible; if it weren't for some people's broken mailers responding to me instead of the list that their mailbox is full or they are on vacation, I'd be sure of it. Here's the revised script, including a copy of the post I made to perl.module-authors. Comments welcome. Feel free to steal and use it if you think it could be useful. :-) -=- just a bit of silliness I conconcted while reading Damian's OOP... Your thoughtful appraisal and suggestions would be most welcome. I'm still experimenting with it off and on. :-) I've found it most useful when downloading large #'s of files and gaugeing(sp?) the speed of my new cablemodem at various times of the day. Is there a good way to turn a <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> into a proper link in the pod, or is that not part of the functionality? I played around a bit but couldn't discover if there was a special trick to do so and didn't spend a lot of time searching deeper, figuring it's a frivolous option, at this point in the life of the script. :-) -=- package Elapse; $Elapse::VERSION = 1.12; require 5.006; use strict; use autouse 'Carp' => qw(confess); use POSIX qw/ strftime /; use Time::HiRes qw/ gettimeofday /; sub TIESCALAR { my( $class, $val ) = @_; $val = "" unless defined($val); confess "Elapse->lapse() unable to use referenced values" if ref($val); bless { now => [gettimeofday()], val => $val }, $class; } sub FETCH { my ( $impl ) = @_; my ($time, $ms) = gettimeofday(); if ( $ms < $impl->{now}[1] ) { $time--; $ms += 1000000; } my $float = sprintf("%06d", $ms - $impl->{now}[1]); my $int = strftime( "%H:%M:%S", localtime( $time - $impl->{now}[0] ) ); my $val = $impl->{val} eq "" ? "" : " [$impl->{val}]"; return "$int.$float" . $val; } sub STORE { my($impl, $val) = @_; $val = "" unless defined($val); confess "Elapse->lapse() unable to use referenced values" if ref($val); $impl->{val} = $val; $impl->{now} = [gettimeofday()]; } sub lapse { tie $_[1], $_[0], $_[1]; } 1; __END__ =pod =head1 DESCRIPTION Elapse.pm is a very simple class with one method: lapse. Basically, the lapse method 'eats the brains' of the variable, squirrels away whatever value it may have held internally, (much like space aliens are known to do in the movies), and also stores the current time within it. Then, whenever you access the value of the variable, the 'alien' within formats the time *differential* between when you initialized the variable, and when you printed it, and returns that (along with any value the variable may hold, as well). :-) Every time you print it, you get the updated differential, returned by the method hidden inside the variable itself. The output will be formatted as HH:MM:SS.000000 [in Microseconds]. =head1 SYNOPSIS =head2 Usage To use Elapse.pm is simplicity itself: use Elapse; # somewhere in your program... Elapse->lapse(my $now); # or you can do: # Elapse->lapse(my $now = "processing"); #...rest of program execution print "Time Wasted: $now\n"; To update the description and reset the time counter mid-stream, simply assign to the variable $now = "parsing"; somewhere in the middle of the program. The new value is stored, while the original time is replaced with the current time. =head2 Sample Output Output looks something like this, using above code: Time Wasted: 00:03:05.565763 or Time Wasted: 00:00:03.016700 [processing] (more output) Time Wasted: 00:00:02.003764 [parsing] =head2 Additional example code You can also use this during a Net::FTP download loop of files to show elapsed time for each file's download. foreach my $file (@files_to_download) { # extract localfile name from $file # ... Elapse->lapse(my $now = "Downloading $localfile."); $ftp->get($file, $localfile) or carp("### Could not download $file! $!") and next; print "Done. Elapsed : $now\n"; # ... } =head1 'BUGS' Elapse offers time granularity smaller than 1 second, but values are approximate since the accuracy is slightly hampered by the virtue of the process itself taking somewhere roughly around 0.0003 - 0.0009 seconds. :-) oops. #!perl use Elapse; Elapse->lapse(my $now = "testing 0"); for (1 .. 5) { print "$now\n"; $now = "testing $_"; } print "$now\n"; 00:00:00.000937 [testing 0] 00:00:00.000743 [testing 1] 00:00:00.000344 [testing 2] 00:00:00.000327 [testing 3] 00:00:00.000358 [testing 4] 00:00:00.000361 [testing 5] =head1 AUTHOR =head2 Author Scott R. Godin, C<E<lt>[EMAIL PROTECTED]<gt>> =head2 Last Update Sun, Nov 25, 2001 =head1 COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 2001 Scott R. Godin. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. =cut 1; print pack "H*", "4a75737420416e6f74686572204d61635065726c204861636b65722c0d"; -- Scott R. Godin | e-mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Laughing Dragon Services | web : http://www.webdragon.net/ It is not necessary to cc: me via e-mail unless you mean to speak off-group. I read these via nntp.perl.org, so as to get the stuff OUT of my mailbox. :-)
