How to get the current time in milliseconds in C Programming [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to measure time in milliseconds using ANSI C?
How can I get the Windows system time with millisecond resolution?

We want to calculate the time which a player have taken to finish the game. But with time.h we could only calculate in seconds. but that is not exact. Is it possible to get the time in milliseconds? and what is the %? to printf?

Flori

exact dupilcate #361863 – Holdover

Answer 1

quick answer

#include<stdio.h>   
#include<time.h>   

int main()   
{   
    clock_t t1, t2;  
    t1 = clock();   
    int i;
    for(i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)   
    {   
        int x = 90;  
    }   

    t2 = clock();   

    float diff = ((float)(t2 - t1) / 1000000.0F ) * 1000;   
    printf("%f",diff);   

    return 0;   
}

Medeah

I thought clock yields the cpu time used, not the real time. – Klingel

This code, while possibly correct on some systems, will not always work. You should use CLOCKS_PER_SEC rather than hard-code 1000000. – Danley

@Danley nice pickup - its required especially on windows under MS VC++ where CLOCKS_PER_SEC is set to 1000. – Perception

Shouldn't the answer be changed according to @Danley comment or at least remove this answer as a correct answer? (@Błażej Michalik) – Debidebilitate

Answer 2

There is no portable way to get resolution of less than a second in standard C So best you can do is, use the POSIX function gettimeofday().

Covetous

On Windows, you could also GetTickCount (). – Maibach

Answer 3

If you're on a Unix-like system, use gettimeofday and convert the result from microseconds to milliseconds.

Shiller