freebsd-nq/share/man/man7/clocks.7
Mike Pritchard dd5527c607 Use the .Fx macro for FreeBSD references for releases prior to 2.0.
Use the .Tn macro for generic FreeBSD references.  Cleanup other
formatting problems noticed while making the above changes.
1997-03-21 20:14:15 +00:00

145 lines
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.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1996 Joerg Wunsch
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.\" $Id: clocks.7,v 1.5 1997/02/22 13:26:13 peter Exp $
.\" "
.Dd April 1, 1996
.Os
.Dt CLOCKS 7
.Sh NAME
.Nm clocks
.Nd various system timers
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Fd #include <time.h>
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Ql HZ
is not part of the application interface in BSD.
.Pp
There are many different real and virtual (timekeeping) clocks with
different frequencies:
.Bl -bullet -offset XXX
.It
The scheduling clock. This is a real clock with frequency that
happens to be 100. It isn't available to applications.
.It
The statistics clock. This is a real clock with frequency that
happens to be 128. It isn't directly available to applications.
.It
The clock reported by
.Xr clock 3 .
This is a virtual clock with a frequency that happens to be 128. It's
actual frequency is given by the macro
.Dv CLOCKS_PER_SEC .
Note that
.Dv CLOCKS_PER_SEC
may be floating point. Don't use
.Fn clock
in new programs under
.Tn FreeBSD .
It is feeble compared with
.Xr getrusage 2 .
It is provided for ANSI conformance. It is implemented by calling
.Fn getrusage
and throwing away information and resolution.
.It
The clock reported by
.Xr times 3 .
This is a virtual clock with a frequency that happens to be 128. It's
actual frequency is given by the macro
.Dv CLK_TCK
(deprecated; don't use) and by
.Fn sysconf SC_CLK_TCK
and by
.Xr sysctl 3 .
Note that its frequency may be different from
.Dv CLOCKS_PER_SEC .
Don't use
.Xr times 3
in new programs under
.Tn FreeBSD .
It is feeble compared with
.Xr gettimeofday 2
together with
.Fn getrusage .
It is provided for POSIX
conformance. It is implemented by calling
.Fn gettimeofday
and
.Fn getrusage
and throwing away information and resolution.
.It
The profiling clock. This is a real clock with frequency 1024.
It is used mainly by
.Xr moncontrol 3 ,
.Xr kgmon 8
and
.Xr gprof 1 .
Applications should determine its actual frequency using
.Xr sysctl 3
or by reading it from the header in the profiling data file.
.It
The mc14618a clock. This is a real clock with a nominal frequency of
32768. It is divided down to give the statistic clock and the profiling
clock. It isn't available to applications.
.It
The microseconds clock. This is a virtual clock with frequency
1000000. It is used for most timekeeping in BSD and is exported
to applications in
.Xr getrusage 2 ,
.Xr gettimeofday 2 ,
.Xr select 2 ,
.Xr getitimer 2 ,
etc... This is the clock that should normally be used
by BSD applications.
.It
the i8254 clock. This is a real clock with a nominal frequency of
1193182. It is divided down to give the scheduling clock. It isn't
available to applications.
.It
the i586 clock on i586 systems. This is a real clock with a frequency
of up to 200000000. It is used to interpolate between values of the
scheduling clock. It isn't available to applications.
.El
.Pp
Summary: if
.Ql HZ
isn't 1000000 then the application is probably using the wrong clock.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr gprof 1 ,
.Xr getitimer 2 ,
.Xr getrusage 2 ,
.Xr gettimeofday 2 ,
.Xr select 2 ,
.Xr clock 3 ,
.Xr moncontrol 3 ,
.Xr times 3
.Sh AUTHORS
This man page has been written by
.ie t J\(:org Wunsch
.el Joerg Wunsch
after a description posted by Bruce Evans.