9.259 TIME8 — Time function (64-bit)

Description:

Returns the current time encoded as an integer (in the manner of the function time(3) in the C standard library). This value is suitable for passing to CTIME, GMTIME, and LTIME.

Warning: this intrinsic does not increase the range of the timing values over that returned by time(3). On a system with a 32-bit time(3), TIME8 will return a 32-bit value, even though it is converted to a 64-bit INTEGER(8) value. That means overflows of the 32-bit value can still occur. Therefore, the values returned by this intrinsic might be or become negative or numerically less than previous values during a single run of the compiled program.

Standard:

GNU extension

Class:

Function

Syntax:

RESULT = TIME8()

Return value:

The return value is a scalar of type INTEGER(8).

See also:

CTIME, GMTIME, LTIME, MCLOCK8, TIME