File: gawk.info, Node: Extension Sample Time, Next: Extension Sample API Tests, Prev: Extension Sample Readfile, Up: Extension Samples 17.7.11 Extension Time Functions -------------------------------- CAUTION: As 'gawk' version 5.1.0, this extension is considered to be obsolete. It is replaced by the 'timex' extension in 'gawkextlib' (*note gawkextlib::). For version 5.1, no warning will be issued if this extension is used. For the next major release, a warning will be issued. In the release after that this extension will be removed from the distribution. The 'time' extension adds two functions, named 'gettimeofday()' and 'sleep()', as follows: '@load "time"' This is how you load the extension. 'the_time = gettimeofday()' Return the time in seconds that has elapsed since 1970-01-01 UTC as a floating-point value. If the time is unavailable on this platform, return -1 and set 'ERRNO'. The returned time should have sub-second precision, but the actual precision may vary based on the platform. If the standard C 'gettimeofday()' system call is available on this platform, then it simply returns the value. Otherwise, if on MS-Windows, it tries to use 'GetSystemTimeAsFileTime()'. 'result = sleep(SECONDS)' Attempt to sleep for SECONDS seconds. If SECONDS is negative, or the attempt to sleep fails, return -1 and set 'ERRNO'. Otherwise, return zero after sleeping for the indicated amount of time. Note that SECONDS may be a floating-point (nonintegral) value. Implementation details: depending on platform availability, this function tries to use 'nanosleep()' or 'select()' to implement the delay.