function for greatest object in list less than or equal to a value

[Peter M. Brigham]

Here are a couple of functions that might be useful re timing processes.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig

----------

function microsecs
   put the long seconds into s
   set the numberformat to "#.000000"
   add 0 to s
   replace "." with empty in s
   return s
end microsecs

function exactTime
   -- YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.######
   --   ie, down to microseconds
   -- times in this format can be arranged chronologically
   --   with an ordinary (non-numeric) sort command
   -- based on verboseTime() by Mark Talluto, Use-LC list
   -- revised by Peter M. Brigham, pmbrig at gmail.com
   
   put the long seconds into s
   put char 1 to offset(".",s)-1 of s into dd
   convert dd to internet english date
   put word 5 of dd into tTime
   set the numberformat to "#.000000"
   add 0 to s
   put char -7 to -1 of s after tTime
   convert dd to dateitems
   put item 1 of dd into tYear
   put item 2 of dd into tMo
   put item 3 of dd into tDay
   set the numberformat to "00"
   add 0 to tMo
   add 0 to tDay
   return tYear & "-" & tMo & "-" & tDay && tTime
end exactTime


On Oct 12, 2015, at 1:41 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> BNig wrote:
> 
>> BTW, what is a tick? Is that the imperial gallon of time? Or more a pint, a
>> fluid ounce?
>> I do kow that ticks bite and :)
> 
> In other programming languages a tick is often a counter within some larger timer framework.
> 
> In HyperTalk it was derived similarly, the default update rate for the early Mac OS vertical retrace subsystem.
> 
> Throughout HyperTalk's life it was the most granular expression of time the language supported, since millisecond support was introduced to the xTalk world by MetaCard in 1992.
> 
> The choice of tying the ticks to retrace was perhaps a necessity in early Mac OS systems, relying as they did on preemptive multitasking. But that reliance also made it an inexact quantity:  by default the vertical retrace would happen 60 times a second, but it was possible to have some processes run long enough to stall it a bit now and then.
> 
> But imprecise as it was it was all we had, so we used it.
> 
> Today both ticks and milliseconds are independent of the display subsystem on all platforms, and generally more reliable.
> 
> I migrated to milliseconds for benchmarking as soon as I became aware of them in MetaCard, since most routines are fast enough that the finer granularity is often useful.
> 
> If you need even finer granularity you can use "the long seconds", but with any of them it's helpful to keep in mind the consideration Mark Wieder reminds us of: modern multi-tasking systems can have throughput affected by a great many considerations beyond our control.
> 
> For this reason all benchmarks should be run multiple times with as few other processes running as practical, and even then their results should be taken with a grain of salt.
> 
> -- 
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
> Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
> ____________________________________________________________________
> Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
> 
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