times() -- System Call (libc)

Obtain process execution times
#include <sys/times.h>
#include <time.h>
int times(tbp)
struct tms *tbp;

times()  reads CPU  time  information about  the current  process and   its
children, and writes it into the structure pointed to by tbp. The structure
tms is declared in the header file sys/times.h, as follows:

struct tms {
     clock_t tms_utime;       /* process user time */
     clock_t tms_stime;       /* process system time */
     clock_t tms_cutime;      /* childrens' user times */
     clock_t tms_cstime;      /* childrens' system times */
};

All of the times are measured in basic machine cycles, or CLK_TCK.

The childrens' times  include the sum of the times  of all terminated child
processes of  the current process and  of all of their  children.  The user
time represents execution time of user code, whereas system time represents
system overhead,  such as executing  system calls, processing  signals, and
other monitoring functions.

times() returns the number of ticks that have passed since system startup.

Files

<sys/times.h>
<time.h>

See Also

acct(),
ftime(),
libc,
time()
times.h,
POSIX Standard, §4.5.2

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness