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Beginner Joined: 21 May 2006 Posts: 11

I searched forums for a bit but could find no instance of this. Was working on moving a timer script across to cmud when I decided to re-write it, however I noticed a discrepancy between the output on Zmud and Cmud.

Current time: 2:25 am

output of #say %secs

Zmud:8764906

Cmud:35314397

Just to be rigorous, I did a %eval(%secs/3600000) --> translates to number of hours

Zmud:2
Cmud:9

Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I checked the %time(), both gave me: Thursday March 26, 2009 2:25:15 am

Any explanation or am I just doing something completely stupid?

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

zMud used the GetTickCount API call, which is less accurate and limited to 32bit. CMud uses QueryPerformanceCounter which is more accurate and is stored as a 64bit number. The number returned by %secs in CMud still has a unit of of milliseconds.

Beginner Joined: 21 May 2006 Posts: 11

That's all well and good but why when I evaluate the millisecond time from midnight does the Cmud value show me 9 hrs when it was 2am i.e 2 hrs....

Adept Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 292 Location: Boston

%eval(%secs/360000) returned 6 at 6:18 am, my seconds number was 2445844. The number you posted gave me zero, it was too big. I don't doubt there could be an issue, still

Beginner Joined: 21 May 2006 Posts: 11

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

The %secs Predefined Variable doesn't do anything for midnight anymore. This was changed because many people wanted a high precision time counter and didn't want to have to adjust for going past midnight.

If you explain what you need to do with the script I am sure many of us would be willing to help point you to the best way to do it.

Beginner Joined: 21 May 2006 Posts: 11

Finally an answer I can use....

The helpfile for Cmud still states that %secs begins counting at midnight, hence my confusion.

What is the time or origin for the new %secs?

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:58 pm

There isn't any defined "origin" for %secs anymore in CMUD. As Vijilante said, CMUD is now calling the QueryPerformanceCounter Windows API routine. The intent is to use %secs to perform relative timing tests and *not* to use %secs for any sort of absolute time. For absolute time, use the %time function, or the various Lua time functions.

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:27 pm

I am now wondering if %secs would be suitable for measuring intervals of time such as 10 days? I've always wanted some time function in Cmud that is similar to the perl time() function which does the following:

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:13 pm

Yeah, Lua will work just fine for this:
zs.var.var1 = math.floor(os.time() / (60*60*24))
Will return the number of days since the epoch. Now I can store that value and subtract subsequent ones to get the number of days between two times.

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 10:28 pm

You could also store the os.time() result for a particular time (see the docs for os.date and os.time to see how they interact for doing that stuff) in case you want to use higher precision sometimes.