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help for ^elapse^
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Timing portions of a program
- ----------------------------

        ^elapse^ start_time [name_of_operation]


Where start_time is a previously defined macro equal to 
the global system macro S_TIME at some earlier point, and 
name_of_operation is a string.


Description
- -----------

^Elapse^ displays a string with the name of the operation, 
if specified, and the time elapsed between start_time and 
current time.



Options
- -------

name_of_operation is a user-defined string.


Remarks
- -------

^Elapse^ automates the procedure of timing a piece of code 
or an entire program.  It is accurate over midnight, but not 
over several days.  It also creates a global S_elap, which is 
a numerical macro of the form hhmmss, where hh is the number 
of hours, mm the number of minutes, and ss the number of seconds.


Examples
- --------

        ^local st = "$S_TIME"^
        ^...^
        ^local oper "Maximum likelihood estimation"^
        ^elapse "`st'" "`oper'"^
        - Maximum likelihood estimation took 7 minutes, 15 seconds.

        ^elapse `st'^
        - Elapsed time was 1 hour, 10 minutes, 32 seconds.

        ^quietly elapse `st'^
        ^if $S_elap > 4500 { mat xx = startxx }^


Saved Results
- -------------

S_elap (see above).


Author
- ------

        Frederic Zimmerman
        Food Research Institute
        Stanford University