Revision as of 15:15, 22 September 2017

$ticks retrieves the number of milliseconds that have elapsed since the system was started. $ticks is most often used in benchmarking.

Details

The $ticks identifier is used to retrieves the current system uptime in milliseconds. The identifier is limited to the resolution of the system timer which is typically in the range of 10 milliseconds to 16 milliseconds. Prior to mIRC version 7.33 the $ticks identifier used the GetTickCount() function which meant the value $ticks returned would wrap around to zero after 49.71 days. In 7.33 the $ticks identifier was switched to use the GetTickCount64() function, eliminating this issue (which wraps around once every 584.9 million years).

Synopsis

$ticks

Parameters

None

Properties

None

Example

; time how long it takes to execute an empty loop 10,000 times.
Alias example {
  var %ticks = $ticks, %x = 10000
  
  while (%x) {
    dec %x
  }
  
  echo -a 10,000 empty iterations took: $calc($ticks - %ticks) ms.
}

Compatibility

Added: mIRC v4.7
Added on: 09 Dec 1996
Note: Unless otherwise stated, this was the date of original functionality.
Further enhancements may have been made in later versions.

See also

• List of identifiers
• List of commands
• $ctime
• $timer
• $ctimer
• $time
• $date
• $gmt
• $asctime
• /noop