A C++ Timer Class

About:

• A simple C++ class that is useful for timing how long it takes to run parts of a program.
• Consists of a single header file timer.h that can be included in any code that needs to compute the execution time of parts of a program.
• The documentation is an example timertest.C file that contains commented examples of all of the features of the class.

Files:

• timer.h: The header file that needs to be included in any program that uses the timer.
• timertest.C: A simple C++ program that demonstrates all of the capabilities of the class.
• Makefile: A Makefile used to compile the timertest.C program above.
• timer.tar: A tar archive containing all of the above files.

Changes:

• Nov 9, 2005:
  • Minor code and documentation fixes.
• September 6, 2005:
  • Removed timer.C, defined all member functions as inline in timer.h.
• April 1, 2005:
  • Fixed a potential initialization bug.
• March 1, 2005:
  • Changed default precision to two decimal places for time values less than an hour, and no decimal places for longer times.
  • Fixed a long-standing problem in which the timer would reset approximately every 72 minutes. However, for longer periods the timer computes total running time, not cpu time.
• December 16, 2004:
  • Modified the interface so that it is, hopefully, simpler and more logical.
  • Added an ostream operator<< to make it possible to do things like 'cout << t' where 't' is a timer object.
  • All timer values are now output to four decimal places. This appears to be two more than what is normally kept track of on a Linux system.
• May 13, 2003: Original posted version.