Re: [Boost-users] date_time microsec_clock::univeral_time() implementation

Brian Neal wrote:

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Jeff Garland wrote:

So I went back and rethought about how I was using boost::date_time. In our pre-boost code, we were just getting these 32-bit numbers, essentially tick counts, from the OS. We were just using these tick counts for comparisons and deltas, timestamping and stuff. We certainly didn't need full dates, as our events last, at most, 10 seconds. If you think about it, these tick counts are just a duration from some OS specific epoch. Aha, time_duration! So in our time critical code, we replaced all of our ptimes with time_durations, and replaced all calls to universal_time() with a function of our own making (getTimeStamp()), which calls clock_gettime() and forms up a time_duration with the results. This worked perfectly and brought back our performance to the pre-boost levels. For our other, non-critical time code, we just left the ptimes in.

Sounds like a good solution.

Well, as I said, the current universal_time() is much faster than treating the results of clock_gettime() as a time_duration from the UNIX epoch. But again, after rethinking our porting to boost, we brought the overkill on ourselves for replacing our tick counts with ptimes. time_durations were a better fit for what we were doing for that one specific case.

Thanks. Boost::date_time is a very useful and powerful library!

You're welcome. Jeff